“Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.”
Source: The 48 Laws of Power
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Robert Greene111
American author 1959Related quotes
“Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)
"Accuracy is twin brother to honesty, and inaccuracy to dishonesty." — Charles Simmons, Laconic Manual and Brief Remarker, containing over a thousand subjects alphabetically and systematically arranged (1852), p. 20: "Accuracy"
Misattributed
“Honesty and trust are promoted, and good neighborliness cultivated.”
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
The Analects, A Great Utopia (The World of Da-Tong)
“Honesty in principle was one thing. In someone’s face, it was another.”
Sarah Dessen book Just Listen
Source: Just Listen
Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …
“The best capital in the world, Mariana, is honesty.”
Girolamo Gigli (1660–1722) Italian dramaturge
Il Don Pilone (1711), Act I., Sc. IX.
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 334.