Quotes about honesty
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Anthony Trollope photo
Kunti photo
Matthijs Maris photo

“A man who becomes used to deluding himself, who fails to face his own faults with revolutionary honesty and even lies to himself, is the most likely to become a traitor, since lying is the beginning of treachery.”

Ashraf Dehghani (1948) amongst the most well known Iranian female Communist revolutionary and member of the Iranian People's Fedai Guer…

Torture and Resistance in Iran, 1971

Conor Oberst photo

“Honesty" "Accuracy" is just "Popular Opinion.”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Lifted or The Story Is in the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground (2002)

Ramsay MacDonald photo

“Felt the virtues of the Victorian times so condemned by Mr Strachey. The simple honesties can always be made a butt by the impish unrealiabilites.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Diary entry (23 April 1921), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 246. MacDonald was reading Strachey's biography of Queen Victoria. He finished the book two days later and wrote in his diary that he was relieved that Strachey "enmeshed in Victoria's virtues & the real drama of her last phase. As a good Victorian I shd. like to let myself loose upon him. A psychological study of unusual interest" (Marquand, p. 246)
1920s

Hermann Rauschning photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Haruki Murakami photo

“Speaking frankly and speaking the truth are two different things entirely. Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty appears first and truth appears last.”

Haruki Murakami (1949) Japanese author, novelist

Source: A Wild Sheep Chase: A Novel (1982), Chapter 17, The Strange Man's Strange Tale

Sam Harris photo

“Honesty is a gift we can give to others. It is also a source of power and an engine of simplicity. Knowing that we will attempt to tell the truth, whatever the circumstances, leaves us with little to prepare for. We can simply be ourselves.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Cf. Mark Twain: "If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."
2010s, Lying (2011)

Eric Maisel photo
Ursula K. Le Guin photo

“What is more arrogant than honesty?”

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 15 “To the Ice” (p. 213)

Cass Elliot photo
Davy Crockett photo
William H. Gass photo
Paul Simon photo
Henry Van Dyke photo

“To desire and strive to be of some service to the world, to aim at doing something which shall really increase the happiness and welfare and virtue of mankind,—this is a choice which is possible for all of us; and surely it is a good haven to sail for. The more we think of it, the more attractive and desirable it becomes. To do some work that is needed, and to do it thoroughly well; to make our toil count for something in adding to the sum total of what is actually profitable for humanity; to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before, or, better still, to make one wholesome idea take root in a mind that was bare and fallow; to make our example count for something on the side of honesty and cheerfulness, and courage, and good faith, and love - this is an aim for life which is very wide, and yet very definite, as clear as light. It is not in the least vague. It is only free; it has the power to embody itself in a thousand forms without changing its character. Those who seek it know what it means, however it may be expressed. It is real and genuine and satisfying. There is nothing beyond it, because there can be no higher practical result of effort. It is the translation, through many languages, of the true, divine purpose of all the work and labor that is done beneath the sun, into one final, universal word. It is the active consciousness of personal harmony with the will of God who worketh hitherto.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: Ships and Havens https://archive.org/stream/shipshavens00vand#page/28/mode/2up/search/more+we+think+of+it (1897), p.27

Charles de Gaulle photo

“Anything can happen someday, even that an act conforming to honour and honesty can end up, at the end of the line, as a good political decision.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Tout peut, un jour, arriver, même qu'un acte conforme à l'honneur et à l'honnêteté apparaisse en fin de compte, comme un bon placement politique.
in Mémoires de guerre.
Writings

Barbara Bush photo
Francesco Guicciardini photo
W. W. Thayer photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Albrecht Thaer photo
Samuel Butler photo

“Honesty consists not in never stealing but in knowing where to stop in stealing, and how to make good use of what one does steal.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Honesty
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VIII - Handel and Music

W.E.B. Du Bois photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Ted Malloch photo

“The business virtue par excellence is honesty—without it markets can’t long survive.”

Ted Malloch (1952) American businessman

Source: Doing Virtuous Business (Thomas Nelson, 2011), p. 27.

Elizabeth I of England photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Sarah Palin photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“Whether the succeeding generation is to be more virtuous than their predecessors, I cannot say; but I am sure they will have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Nathaniel Macon (12 January 1819) http://books.google.com/books?id=oiYWAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Honesty+is+the+first+chapter+in+the+book+of+wisdom%22&pg=PA112#v=onepage
1810s

Scott Lynch photo
Colin Wilson photo
Madonna photo
Martin Amis photo
Nile Kinnick photo
John Buchan photo
Lois McMaster Bujold photo
Sheikh Hasina photo

“I want work, I want work with honesty; corruption should be stopped, corruption shouldn't take place in any way.”

Sheikh Hasina (1947) Prime Minister of Bangladesh

Sheikh giving tough warning in her introductory speech at the second Secretary Committee meeting against corruption. http://www.thedailystar.net/country/prime-minister-sheikh-hasina-warns-government-officials-against-corruption-1427209

Robert E. Lee photo
H. G. Wells photo
Ted Nugent photo

“GOP, your very existence is on the line here. Show some honesty or you’re done.”

Ted Nugent (1948) American rock musician

Give Trump the Medal of Freedom (August 7, 2015)

Benjamin N. Cardozo photo

“Not honesty alone, but the punctilio of an honor the most sensitive, is then the standard of behavior.”

Benjamin N. Cardozo (1870–1938) United States federal judge

Meinhard v. Salmon, 249 N.Y. 458, 164 N.E. 545 (N.Y. 1928), describing the fiduciary duties inherent in a partnership.
Judicial opinions

Jules Bianchi photo

“I honesty thought it was over.”

Jules Bianchi (1989–2015) French motor racing driver

Bianchi expected to stay Force India reserve in 2013 http://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/bianchi-expected-to-stay-force-india-reserve-in-2013/, Motorsport.com, 5 March 2013

Vitruvius photo
Nakayama Miki photo
Joseph McCarthy photo
Friedrich Hayek photo
John Steinbeck photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Bill O'Reilly photo

“America today is a confused society, caught up in a terror war, a culture war, and a media war, where honesty and professional standards have vanished.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-03-23
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television

John Buchan photo

“I never mind choler in a man if he have also honesty and good sense.”

Source: Salute to Adventurers (1915), Ch. 6 "Tells of My Education"

Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Bernard Mandeville photo
Nancy Pelosi photo

“The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, D. C., and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history.”

Nancy Pelosi (1940) American politician, first female Speaker of the House of Representatives, born 1940

Source: Post-election comments, 2006-11-7. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/07/AR2006110700473.html

Thomas Jefferson photo
Vladimir Lenin photo
George Gissing photo

“Women, he held, had never been treated with elementary justice. To worship them was no less unfair than to hold them in contempt. The honest man, in our day, should regard a woman without the least bias of sexual prejudice; should view her simply as a fellow-being, who, according to circumstances, might or not be on his own plane. Away with all empty show and form, those relics of barbarism known as chivalry! He wished to discontinue even the habit of hat-doffing in female presence. Was not civility preserved between man and man without such idle form? Why not, then, between man and woman? Unable, as yet, to go the entire length of his principles in every-day life, he endeavoured, at all events, to cultivate in his intercourse with women a frankness of speech, a directness of bearing, beyond the usual. He shook hands as with one of his own sex, spine uncrooked; he greeted them with level voice, not as one who addresses a thing afraid of sound. To a girl or matron whom he liked, he said, in tone if not in phrase, "Let us be comrades." In his opinion this tended notably to the purifying of the social atmosphere. It was the introduction of simple honesty into relations commonly marked — and corrupted — by every form of disingenuousness. Moreover, it was the great first step to that reconstruction of society at large which every thinker saw to be imperative and imminent.
But Constance Bride knew nothing of this, and in her ignorance could not but misinterpret the young man's demeanor. She felt it to be brusque; she imagined it to imply a purposed oblivion of things in the past.”

George Gissing (1857–1903) English novelist

Source: Our Friend the Charlatan (1901), Ch. II

Ignatius Sancho photo
Katherine Philips photo
Anthony Trollope photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Bob Dylan photo
Isabella Fyvie Mayo photo

“For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life.”

Isabella Fyvie Mayo (1843–1914) Scottish poet, novelist, reformer

Reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 388.

Dana Gioia photo
Joseph Conrad photo
Aldo Capitini photo
Josh Groban photo
Jay-Z photo
R. A. Lafferty photo
Olga Rozanova photo

“Only the absence of honesty and of a true love of art provides some artists with the affrontery to live on stale cans of artistic economics stocked up for years, and, year in year out, until they are fifty, to mutter about what they had first started to talk about when they were twenty.”

Olga Rozanova (1886–1918) Russian artist

Quote, 1913, in 'Osnovy novogo tvorchestva i prichiny ego neponimaniia,', in 'Soiuz molodezhi' (St. Petersburg), March 1913, p. 20; translated in John E. Bowlt, The Russian Avant- Garde: Theory and Criticism; Thames and Hudson, London 1988, p. 109

Woodrow Wilson photo
Michelle Obama photo
Mike Pence photo

“Honesty is the axis on which leadership spins.”

Mike Pence (1959) 48th Vice President of the United States

Remarks at Reagan Library https://www.c-span.org/video/?414899-1/mike-pence-delivers-remarks-reagan-library, C-SPAN.org (September 8, 2016)
Trump/Pence 2016 Presidential Campaign

Frank Ocean photo

“There's just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.”

Frank Ocean (1987) American musician

GQ, November 20, 2012 http://www.gq.com/story/frank-ocean-interview-gq-december-2012

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester photo

“For all Men would be Cowards if they durst:
And Honesty’s against all common Sense.”

John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester (1647–1680) English poet, and peer of the realm

ll. 158-159.
A Satire Against Mankind (1679)

John Ruskin photo
Thomas Carlyle photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo
Albert Barnes photo
Mark Driscoll photo

“I study the Bible all week, pray to the Lord, and then I speak from my heart. It's all about brutal honesty.”

Mark Driscoll (1970) American pastor

Tu, Janet I., Pastor Mark Packs 'em In http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2003/1130/cover.html, Seattle Times, November 30, 2003.

Ellsworth Kelly photo

“Making art has first of all to do with honesty. My first lesson was to see objectively, to erase all 'meaning' of the thing seen. Then only, could the real meaning of it be understood and felt.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. unknown : 'Notes from 1969'

Ignatius Sancho photo

“Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Honestly" (p.69)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Charles Dickens photo
Henry George photo
Ilham Aliyev photo
Jack Kevorkian photo

“We need some honesty and sincerity instead of corrupt government in Washington.”

Jack Kevorkian (1928–2011) American pathologist, euthanasia activist

As quoted in "Kevorkian Plans Congressional Run" (13 March 2008), Fox News
2000s, 2008

Ernest Hemingway photo
Mark Hopkins (educator) photo
George Holmes Howison photo