Quotes About Integrity

Hard work was a fundamental virtue, for hard work didn't allow time for marches or sit-ins. Elwood would not make a commotion of himself by messing with that movie-theater nonsense, she said. "You have made an agreement with Mr. Marconi to work in his store after school. If your boss can't depend on you, you won't be able to keep a job." Duty might protect him, as it had protected her.

Elwood said, It's against the law. State law, but also Elwood's. If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest. That's how he saw it, how he'd always seen things.

The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse.

You have to have an inside you, she used to say, and an outside you. Ain't nobody's business who you are really, so it's up to you what you gave them.

Turner had never met a kid like Elwood before. Sturdy was the word he returned to, even though the Tallahassee boy looked soft, conducted himself like a goody-goody, and had an irritating tendency to preach. Wore eyeglasses you wanted to grind underfoot like a butterfly. He talked like a white college boy, read books when he didn't have to, and mined them for uranium to power his own personal A-bomb. Still--sturdy.

The encyclopedias are empty. There are people who trick you and deliver emptiness with a smile, while others rob you of your self-respect. You need to remember who you are.

This sense of dignity.

If everyone looked the other way, then everybody was in on it. If he looked the other way, he was as implicated as the rest.

Not because any attack on his brother was an attack on himself, like they said in church, but because for him to do nothing was to undermine his own dignity.

The world may be mean, but people don't have to be, not if they refuse. Mabel

Patriots boasted of how often they'd been searched and given a clean bill.

In here and out there are the same, but in here no one has to act fake anymore.

world. They didn't need people to say what they meant. The tables and facts couldn't be shaped into what they were not. The

a rusty machete and a bag of almonds makes you a person of substance?

He upheld the misspelling in his thoughts, in keeping with his loyalty to his mistakes.

Some days Carney felt the need to press his cousin on a lie until it broke and some days his love was such that the slightest quiver of mistrust made him ashamed.

I'm only telling you on the truth, he said. If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was none of those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

Are you saying I'm a liar? --No I'm just, like, speaking.

Even if people laughed at the notion of goodness, if they found it sentimental, or nostalgic, it didn't matter -- it was non ov those things, he said, and it had to be fought for.

It's as if there is a conspiracy of silence among men — a brotherhood — to let each other off the hook.

Being willing to forgive is not the same as being weak. Indeed, it takes a great deal of strength to accept someone else's acknowledgment of their mistakes.

Being willing to forgive is not the same as being weak.

My motto is: When in doubt, just keep lying. Even if you're terrible at it.