Quotes About Honesty

Honesty is a good thing, but it comes in different flavors. Honesty about our feelings is sincerity. Honesty about our intentions is candor. But suppose our feelings or intentions are childish or evil. What then do we gain by expressing or allowing them? The most important form of honesty, especially in a leader, is determining the right course of action and forthrightly pursuing it.

Lincoln admitted his infirmities to make way for his spring.

Integrity is the essence of everything successful.

Let America realize that self-scrutiny is not treason. Self-examination is not disloyalty.

And sometimes, the "best" stories are the "true" ones!

Serious disputes are seldom resolved without a genuine change in the parties' thinking. And a false consensus may be more productive of conflict than an honest disagreement.

Oh, I can't talk to you the way I've wanted to; I've been tellin' lies but I'll tell you the truth. Darling, I'm tired and I should be leaving, leaving. You know I'm tired and I should be leaving, leaving tonight.

He who may have failed back there has his chance to make good here; and he will not be judged by the position he holds so much as by the way he plays the game and does his job, however humble it may be....

The principle of acting in good faith is at the heart of decent work.

In particular, there should be no sneaking about. Sneaking away from a child at night does not foster trust, and a sense of trust is important for good sleep.

Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one's words and one's soul.

You must not lie about trilobites, nor yet about time.

I don't know any of us who are in relationships that are totally honest - it doesn't exist.

This reflects a general tendency. People are more willing to lie by omission than commission. If I am selling you a used car, I do not feel obligated to mention that the car is burning a lot of oil, but if you ask me explicitly: "Does this car burn a lot of oil?" you are likely to wangle an admission from me that yes, there has been a small problem along those lines. To get at the truth, it helps to ask specific questions.

this book has been written by a certifiably lazy man.

To approach these problems we once again rely on one of our guiding principles: transparency.

Toward the end of the plague, yellow journalism had spread a cancerous dread of vampires to all corners of the nation. He could remember himself the rash of pseudo-scientific articles that veiled an out-and-out fright campaign designed to sell papers. There was something grotesquely amusing in that; the frenetic attempt to sell papers while the world died. Not that all newspapers had done that. Those papers that had lived in honesty and integrity died the same way.

When I fume in the tollbooth line, I am not a good person to whom a bad thing is happening. I am a liar who is getting what he deserves.

You were not cut out for a quiet life because you are honest to a fault. A man can want something to the point of indecency, he said, and when he attains his goal, it is ashes in his mouth and a bad conscience. The twentieth century did not look to be an age with any patience for the past.

What she likes and doesn't, when she isn't lying the lazy lie of decency.

There are so many names for the thing that everyone is scared to death of, and everyone wants to tell you theirs.

Metaphor is the only possible language available to religion because it alone is honest about Mystery.

Integrity largely has to do with purifying our intentions and a growing honesty about our actual motives.

I guess prophets are those who do not care whether you are ready to hear their message. They say it because it has to be said and because it is true.