Quotations: Honesty

Honesty is the best policy, but insanity is a better defense.
Anon

Honesty is a question of right or wrong, not a matter of policy.
Anon

It was a grand trait of the old Roman that with him one and the same word meant both honor and honesty.
Anon

It was the boast of Augustus that he found Rome of brick and left it of marble. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast when he shall have it to say that he found law... a sealed book and left it a living letter; found it the patrimony of the rich and left it the inheritance of the poor; found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression and left it the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence.
Henry Brougham

Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you'll be so close as to be living inside each other's skins.
Lois McMaster Bujold

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
George Carlin

Concentration is my motto - first honesty, then industry, then concentration.
Andrew Carnegie

In all honesty, Johnny, we are often at the mercy of the White House for the news we report. Frequently, we simply repeat verbatim what the White House tells us.
Connie Chung

Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?
Cicero

Underlying the whole scheme of civilization is the confidence men have in each other, confidence in their integrity, confidence in their honesty, confidence in their future.
Bourke Cockran

You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Benjamin Franklin

If we slide into one of those rare moments of military honesty, we realize that the technical demands of modern warfare are so complex a considerable percentage of our material is bound to malfunction even before it is deployed against a foe. We no longer waste manpower by carrying the flag into battle. Instead we need battalions of electronic engineers to keep the terrible machinery grinding.
Ernest K. Gann

Honesty pays, but it doesn't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
Kin Hubbard

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.
Thomas Jefferson

Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.
Don Marquis

Honesty pays, but it don't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
Frank McKinney

It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
H. L. Mencken

Honesty is probably the sexiest thing a man can give to a woman.
Debra Messing

People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.
Richard J. Needham

I distrust all systematisers, and avoid them. The will to a system shows a lack of honesty.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The very spring and root of honesty and virtue lie in good education.
Plutarch

Honesty: the most important thing in life. Unless you really know how to fake it, you'll never make it.
Bernard Rosenberg

They envy the distinction I have won; let them therefore, envy my toils, my honesty, and the methods by which I gained it.
Sallust

...the honour of a maid is her name; and no legacy is so rich as honesty.
William Shakespeare

Every man has his fault, and honesty is his.
William Shakespeare

No legacy is so rich as honesty.
William Shakespeare

We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
George Bernard Shaw

How frequently are the honesty and integrity of a man disposed of by a smile or a shrug. How many good and generous actions have been sunk into oblivion by a distrustful look, or stamped with the imputation of bad motives, by a mysterious and seasonable whisper!
Sterne

Each time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you toward greater success. Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strong forces pushing you toward failure.
Joseph Sugarman

Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
Mark Twain

Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
Richard Whately

Honesty is the best image.
Tom Wilson