Quotes on Honesty

How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.

The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.

Even were the workers able to have their own representatives, for which our good Socialist politicians are clamoring, what chances are there for their honesty and good faith?

There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds.

Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.

Daughter am I in my mother's house, but mistress in my own.

The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

The death of a single human being is too heavy a price for the vindication of any principle, however sacred.

I have found that nothing so deceives your adversaries as telling them the truth.

Only a life of goodness and honesty leaves us feeling spiritually healthy and human.

Could beauty, my lord, have better commerce than with honesty?

We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.

We may well be the ones Proverbs warns when it reminds us: "Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value the one who speaks the truth." The point is clear: If the people speak and the king doesn't listen, there is something wrong with the king. If the king acts precipitously and the people say nothing, something is wrong with the people.

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.

Is not anyone with any degree of mental honesty conscious of telling lies all day long, both in talking and writing, simply because lies will fall into artistic shape when truth will not?

It is our job above all in politics to tackle the big issues and to explain them, and have the honesty to say to people, 'There are no easy solutions here.'

Truth is generally the best vindication against slander

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

Be yourself and think for yourself, and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the inclusions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping you in ignorance.