Quotes about Honesty

Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away.

Whatever you are, be a good one.

I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but rationalized illegal behavior, he said. You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.

Those who tell the young man to live well and the old man to die well is nothing but a fool, not only for what life has in happiness to both young and old, but also for one must be careful in live honestly as well as die honestly.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

True glory takes root, and even spreads; all false pretences, like flowers, fall to the ground; nor can any counterfeit last long.

What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.

The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.

Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.

In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness in one sense will cost everything.

If the people were to ever find out what we have done, we would be chased down the streets and lynched.

True independence and freedom can only exist in doing what's right.