Famous Quotes & Sayings

John Harington

From your confessor, lawyer and doctor, hide not your case on no condition. [Is this a way of saying that honesty is the best policy?]

Ayn Rand

God help us, ma'am! Do you see what we saw? We saw that we'd been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it - for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next man's dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost, the dishonest won. How long could men stay good under this sort of a law of goodness?

Ayn Rand

An honest man is one who knows that he can't consume more than he has produced.

Ayn Rand

Integrity is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake your consciousness, just as honesty is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake existence.

Ayn Rand

Honest people are never touchy about the matter of being trusted

Ayn Rand

Only a man of integrity can possess the virtue of honesty, since only the faking of one’s consciousness can permit the faking of existence.

Ayn Rand

When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed

Ayn Rand

When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion - when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing - when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors - when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don't protect you against them, but protect them against you - when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice - you may know that your society is doomed.

Aubrey O'Day

I know that everybody is so obsessed with this idea of fame, and they think that I'm obsessed. In all honesty, I'm just doing me.

Bertrand Russell

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

Benjamin Bratt

I've always felt that acting is acting at the end of the day, so whether you're doing comedy or heavy drama or anything else in between, you always have to bring a semblance of honesty to it. It's all make believe.

Benjamin Bratt

Part of my aspiration as a film actor is to bring subtlety to everything I do - honesty but subtlety.

Benjamin Cardozo

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

Benjamin Cardozo

What has once been settled by a precedent will not be unsettled overnight, for certainty and uniformity are gains not lightly sacrificed. Above all is this true when honest men have shaped their conduct on the faith of the pronouncement.

Benjamin Disraeli

One of the hardest things in this world is to admit you are wrong. And nothing is more helpful in resolving a situation than its frank admission.

Jim Brickman

The whole idea of my music now is honesty and really being who I am. It's not really something I decide, and it's not something that you learn.

Gretchen Wilson

They're the kind of people who were honest. They'd listen and tell me what they thought - the kind of honesty you need when you're trying to perfect your craft.

Harry Frankfurt

The fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him . . . He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.

Harry Frankfurt

Bullshit is unavoidable when circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus, the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled-whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others - to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant.

Gordon B. Hinckley

In matters of honesty, there are no shortcuts; no little white lies, or big black lies, only the simple, honest truth spoken in total candor... Being true is different than being honest.

Gordon B. Hinckley

Simple honesty is so remarkable a quality. It is of the very essence of Integrity.

Gordon B. Hinckley

There are four pillars to a happy marriage: respect one another as individuals; (give) soft answers; (practice)financial honesty; (conduct) family prayer.

Gordon B. Hinckley

Integrity is at the heart of commerce in the world in which we live. Honesty and integrity comprise the very underpinnings of society.....Indeed, the strength and safety of any organization-including the family-lie in the integrity of its members. Without personal integrity, there can be no confidence. Without confidence, there can be no prospect of permanent success.

Glen Cook

I guess each of us, at some time, finds one person with whom we are compelled towards absolute honesty, one person whose good opinion of us becomes a substitute for the broader opinion of the world. And that opinion becomes more important than all our sneaky, sleazy schemes of greed, lust, self-aggrandizement, whatever we are up to while lying the world into believing we are just plain nice folks.

Gerrit Smith

But I love honesty, and, therefore; do I make great account of facts.

Henry David Thoreau

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It requires to be conciliated by nobler conduct than the world demands or can appreciate.

Henry David Thoreau

Absolutely speaking, Do unto others as you would that they should do unto you is by no means a golden rule, but the best of current silver. An honest man would have but little occasion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such a case.

Henry David Thoreau

I sometimes despair of getting anything quite simple and honest done in this world by the help of men. They would have to be passed through a powerful press first, to squeeze their old notions out of them, so that they would not soon get upon their legs again.

H. L. Mencken

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.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.

Jessica Lynch

Honesty has always been very important to me.

Jeremy Collier

Despair makes a despicable figure, and descends from a mean original. 'Tis the offspring of fear, of laziness and impatience; it argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty, too. I would not despair unless I saw misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.