Quotes About Honesty

Zweig would have dismissed our modern emotional incontinence as a sign not of honesty but of an increasing inability or unwillingness truly to feel.

There is, in fact, no better way to produce shallow and superficial people than to let them live their lives entirely in the open, without concealment of anything.

large and honest, but indifferent or incompetent, state bureaucracy creates expectations that give rise to this dialectic of dependence and resentment, which does not exist in Italy, where no one would assume the honesty and therefore the benevolence of the public administration in the first place.

THE most hopeful adage of political folklore is: "One man plus the truth makes a majority.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

One of our defects as a nation is a tendency to use what have been called "weasel words." When a weasel sucks eggs the meat is sucked out of the egg. If you use a "weasel word" after another there is nothing left of the other.

A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.

Liar' is just as ugly a word as 'thief,' because it implies the presence of just as ugly a sin in one case as in the other. If a man lies under oath or procures the lie of another under oath, if he perjures himself or suborns perjury, he is guilty under the statute law.

No man who is corrupt, no man who condones corruption in others, can possibly do his duty by the community.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency.

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned.

I have a perfect horror of words that are not backed up by deeds.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when any one engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

Any man who has met with success, if he will be frank with himself, must admit that there has been a big element of fortune in the success.

Let these innocent people be careful not to invest in corporations where those in control are not men of probity, men who respect the laws; above all let them avoid the men who make it their one effort to evade or defy the laws.

We should not take part in acting a lie any more than in telling a lie. We should not say that men are equal where they are not equal, nor proceed upon the assumption that there is an equality where it does not exist; but we should strive to bring about a measurable equality, at least to the extent of preventing the inequality which is due to force or fraud.

But we must keep steadily in mind that no people were ever yet benefited by riches if their prosperity corrupted their virtue.

I do not think partisanship should ever obscure the truth.

What I cannot understand about the Russian is the way he will lie when he knows perfectly well that you know he is lying.

Yet it is curious to see how a really truthful man will forget his misses, and his hits at close quarters, and, by dint of constant repetition, will finally persuade himself that he is in the habit of killing his game at three or four hundred yards.

Flattery may be considered as a mode of companionship, degrading but profitable to him who flatters.

Lying eats into the soul. If it becomes a habit it frays the edge of your spirit. Truth telling, although sometimes harder to do, strengthens your heart. It serves a person ill not to tell the truth.

They spoke politely and with deference to the adults, whereas it went against my nature not to speak plainly. To many people speaking plainly is the same as speaking rudely. Whereas to me, if one was direct, it saved time and misunderstanding.

But even though I like having sex with you, I think you're kind of a huge asshole, and I don't want to have to talk to you again.