Honesty Quotes

A few honest men are better than numbers.

Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) Lord Protector of England.

Honest men are the soft easy cushions on which knaves repose and fatten.

Thomas Otway (1652-1685) English dramatist.

It should seem that indolence itself would incline a person to be honest; as it requires infinitely greater pains and contrivance to be a knave.

William Shenstone (1714-1763) British poet.

It would be ingratitude in some men to turn honest when they owe all they have to their knavery.

Though I am not naturally honest, I am so sometimes by chance.

There is one way to find out if a man is honest ask him. If he says “yes” you know he is crooked.

Groucho Marx (1895-1977) American comic actor.

He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.

Bishop George Berkely (1685-1753) Irish philosopher.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you.

William Blake (1757-1827) English poet, artist.

Don’t be ashamed to say what you are not ashamed to think.

I am afraid we must the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

It is kindness to refuse immediately what you intend to deny.

An honest man’s the noblest work of God.

Pope.

Honesty is the best policy.

Franklin.

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one rascal less in the world.

Carlyle.

It was a grand trait of the old Roman that with him one and the same world meant both honor and honesty.

Advance.

To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.

Shakespeare.

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.

Socrates.

All other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not honesty and good nature.

Montaigne.

Nothing more completely baffles one who is full of trick and duplicity than straightforward and simple integrity in another. A knave would rather quarrel with a brother-knave than with a fool, but he would rather avoid a quarrel with one honest man than with both. He can combat a fool by management and address, and he can conquer a knave by temptations. But the honest man is neither to be bamboozled not bribed.

Colton.

He who freely praises what he means to purchase, and he who enumerates the faults of what he means to sell, may set up a partnership with honesty.

Lavater.

A grain of honesty and native worth is of more values than all the adventitious ornaments, estates, or preferment’s, for the sake of which some of the better sort so oft turn knaves.

Shaftesbury.

Let honesty be as the breath of thy soul; than shalt thou reach the point of happiness, and independence shall be thy shield and buckler, thy helmet and crown; then shall thy soul walk upright, nor stoop to the silken wretch because he hath riches, nor pocket an abuse because the hand which offers it wears a ring set with diamonds.

Franklin.

The only disadvantage of an honest heart is credulity.

Sir P.Sidney.

A straight line is shortest in morals as well as in geometry.

Rahel.

God looks only to the pure, not to the full hands.

Laberius.