Quotes about Honesty

• It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. 
• If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything. 
• Who lies for you will lie against you.
• No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
• Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. 
• A half truth is a whole lie. 
• A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. 
• Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind.
• A truth that's told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.
• The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.
• The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.
• Dare to be true:  nothing can need a lie:  A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby.
• With lies you may get ahead in the world - but you can never go back.
• Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain't lawful tender for a loaf of bread.
• The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff.
• A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
• When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback. 
• Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it.
• Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence.
• A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future. 
• I never lie because I don't fear anyone.  You only lie when you're afraid.
• We tell lies when we are afraid... afraid of what we don't know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us.  But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
• Truth fears no questions. 
• There are only two ways of telling the complete truth - anonymously and posthumously.
• Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom. 
• I don't mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy.
• There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty.  The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other.
• Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children. 
• The truth brings with it a great measure of absolution, always.
• Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
• If you want to ruin the truth, stretch it. 
• The truth is more important than the facts. 
• Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited. 
• Respect for the truth is an acquired taste.
• A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on. 
• Always telling the truth is no doubt better than always lying, although equally pathological. 
• If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms.  For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain.  But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field. 
• When a man lies, he murders some part of the world. 
• A lie is just the truth waiting to be itself. 
• It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying. 
• People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.
• There is always a way to be honest without being brutal.
• If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
• It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society.  When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime.
• Beware of the half truth.  You may have gotten hold of the wrong half.
• When truth is divided, errors multiply.
• Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
• Honesty pays, but it don't seem to pay enough to suit some people.
• A little candor never leaves me.  It is what protects me. 
• Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. 
• It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian.
• No mask like open truth to cover lies, As to go naked is the best disguise.
• Truth is mighty and will prevail.  There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so.
• Reality is bad enough.  Why should I tell the truth?
• Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. 
• Always tell the truth.  Even if you have to make it up.
• The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
• The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do.
• The highest compact we can make with our fellow is - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore."
• Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
• Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.  Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
• Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true.
• The truth needs so little rehearsal.
• A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.
• Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
• A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. 
• Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication.  They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others.  Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships.
• It takes two to lie.  One to lie and one to listen.
• There's one way to find out if a man is honest - ask him.  If he says, "Yes," you know he is a crook.
• One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives.
• Someday a computer will give a wrong answer to spare someone's feelings, and man will have invented artificial intelligence.
• It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar. Jerome
• Always tell the truth.  If you can't always tell the truth, don't lie.
• I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle.  Washington could not lie.  I can lie, but I won't.