Quotes About Integrity

TRUTHFUL, adj. Dumb and illiterate.

I was born to poor because of honest parents.

The gambling known as business looks with austere disfavor upon the business known as gambling.

BLACKGUARD, n. A man whose qualities, prepared for display like a box of berries in a market—the fine ones on top—have been opened on the wrong side. An inverted gentleman.

We must stop chasing dollars, stop lying, stop cheating, stop ignoring art, literature and all the refining agencies and instrumentalities of civilization.

We must subdue our detestable habit of shaking hands with prosperous rascals and fawning upon the merely rich.

To expect that men who do not honorably and intelligently conduct their private affairs will honorably and intelligently conduct the affairs of the community is to be a fool.

The tendency to lie is one thing; lying is another.

MACHINATION, n. The method employed by one's opponents in baffling one's open and honorable efforts to do the right thing.

ACCOUNTABILITY, n. The mother of caution.

VIRTUES, n.pl. Certain abstentions.

It's a rare man who's made better by a bit of power.

I don't trust a man who drinks,' he growled, not bothered about dressing it up. 'A man takes to drinking, then he gets weak, then his mind goes.' Cosca sadly shook his head. 'You have it back to front. A man's mind goes, then he gets weak, then he takes to drink. The bottle is the symptom, not the cause.

Nothing to it. You treat folk the way you'd want to be treated, and you can't go far wrong.

You keep an oath not for the oath but for yourself.

That was an age of great men doing what was right...This is an age of little men doing what they must.

Never took an easy path if he thought it was the wrong one. Never stepped back from a fight if he thought it had to be done.

If you're a good man, and you try to think about what the right thing is every day of your life, and you build things to be proud of so bastards can come and burn them in a moment, and you make sure and say thank you kindly each time they kick the guts out of you, do you think when you die, and they stick you in the mud, you turn into gold?' 'What?' 'Or do you turn to fucking shit like the rest of us?

That was the age of great men, doing what was right.

Nobility is shown not by the respect one is given by the highest, but the respect one gives to the lowly.

The clever words leaked out of his mind and he spoke without thinking, looking her straight in the eye. Maybe this was what honesty felt like.

A man is measured by his enemies. Worthy ones can be more missed than friends.

He'd played at being a different man, but it had all been lies. The hardest kind to see through. The kind you tell yourself.

Sand dan Glokta, shield to the helpless. Is it ever too late to be . . . a good man?