Honesty is the best policy.

I think it’s an Irish thing. We don’t really care. We say it as we mean it, and you have to deal with it. The truth is the truth.

Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, treating people with respect.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar.

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously.

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

He that fails in his endeavors after wealth or power will not long retain either honesty or courage.

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

Character is power.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

The truth doesn’t hurt unless it ought to.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

If you’re lying, you’re lying.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

I can be a cruel person.

Many people aren’t rich because they’re liars.

The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.

Integrity means that you are the same in public as you are in private.

If every choice you make comes from an honest place, you’re solid, and nothing anybody can say about you can rock you or change your opinion.

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

I love that we can trust Barack to do what he says he’s going to do, even when it’s hard – especially when it’s hard.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

My brother Bob doesn’t want to be in government – he promised Dad he’d go straight.

When you stand for something, you’ve got to stand for it all the way, not half way.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

No woman should ever be quite accurate about her age. It looks so calculating.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

I’ll be honest: I haven’t ruled politics out.

I’d rather tell you how I really feel.

Those that are most slow in making a promise are the most faithful in the performance of it.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

I’m not always going to say things the perfect way, the right way. But I’m going to say how I feel.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

Honor means that a man is not exceptional; fame, that he is. Fame is something which must be won; honor, only something which must not be lost.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

Ability without honor is useless.

I have a personal ambition to live my life honestly and honor the true love that I’ve had and also the people I’ve had around me. I want to stay hopeful, even though I get scared about why we’re even alive at all.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.

If I’m honest I have to tell you I still read fairy-tales and I like them best of all.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

People often think I’m a faker, but I’m usually honest, in a certain way – in such a way that often nobody believes me!

Exaggeration is a blood relation to falsehood and nearly as blamable.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Where is the man who has the strength to be true, and to show himself as he is?

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

It is better to be deceived by one’s friends than to deceive them.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.