Honesty is the best policy.

The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them. I would tell them: ‚Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.‘

Duty cannot exist without faith.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

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.

Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.

I change my mind a lot. I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.

Every time I say something that’s extremely truthful out loud, it literally breaks the Internet.

The best thing is to always keep honest people around, because when you have a bunch of yes men around that know that you’re making a mistake but let you go on with it, that’s when it ruins your mind state as an artist.

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.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

The best way to keep one’s word is not to give it.

You have to listen very carefully and tell the truth if you are going to get a paranoid person to open up to you.

Unlike grown ups, children have little need to deceive themselves.

I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

If you’re lying, you’re lying.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

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

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

I believe that economics is based on scarcity of markets. And it’s possible to monetize your art without compromising the integrity of it for commerce.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

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.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

You don’t tell deliberate lies, but sometimes you have to be evasive.

A gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.

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

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

Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back.

Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed.

Tell the truth, but tell it slant.

Selling out is doing something you don’t really want to do for money. That’s what selling out is.

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

To see the right and not to do it is cowardice.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

I am not a crook.

Any man or institution that tries to rob me of my dignity will lose.

It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

‚Tis not enough your counsel still be true; Blunt truths more mischief than nice falsehoods do.

Concentration is my motto – first honesty, then industry, then concentration.

I have in sincerity pledged myself to your service, as so many of you are pledged to mine. Throughout all my life and with all my heart I shall strive to be worthy of your trust.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

Do not be very upright in your dealings for you would see by going to the forest that straight trees are cut down while crooked ones are left standing.

One thing about me is I try to be honest.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give everyone else his due.

When you walk into my classroom, I’m going to give it to you straight, just like in the real world, because that’s the only way to prepare you for the real world.

Many people seem to have this double moral. They say one thing and then do another thing. They say that the climate crisis is very important and yet they do nothing about it.

With people of limited ability modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent it is hypocrisy.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

My days, my years, my life has seen up and downs, lights and darknesses. If I wrote only and continually of the ‚light‘ and never mentioned the other, then as an artist, I would be a liar.

There’s no point in saying anything but the truth.

I exaggerate when I’m angry, but I’ve never gone around telling people things that aren’t true about me.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.