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

People need good lies. There are too many bad ones.

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

Each book I’ve done somehow finds its own unique form, a specific way it has to be written, and once I find it, I stick with it.

Light is the greatest disinfectant in nature and also in organizations.

There’s one way to find out if a man is honest – ask him. If he says, ‚Yes,‘ you know he is a crook.

It’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order to simply make a poem, that you fail.

People make suggestions on what to say all the time. I’ll give you an example; I don’t read what’s handed to me. People say, ‚Here, here’s your speech, or here’s an idea for a speech.‘ They’re changed. Trust me.

Falsehood is cowardice, the truth courage.

To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

Part of the inhumanity of the computer is that, once it is competently programmed and working smoothly, it is completely honest.

The snow goose need not bathe to make itself white. Neither need you do anything but be yourself.

I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don’t do things to shock people. I’m not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be on this planet. So while I’m here, I might as well make the most of it.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

I think that it’s okay to be mad at someone who hurt you. This isn’t about, like, the pageantry of trying to seem like nothing affects you.

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

The spread of online information isn’t just good for charities. It’s also good for donors. You can go to a site like Charity Navigator, which evaluates nonprofits on their financial health as well as the amount of information they share about their work.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

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.

I’m not going to say I’m cool, because I don’t really feel that. I just don’t care at all, and I guess that’s what people think is cool.

Do what you feel in your heart to be right- for you’ll be criticized anyway. You’ll be damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Nothing shows a man’s character more than what he laughs at.

I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.

Occasionally the conflict between ‚what we stand for‘ and ‚what we do‘ has been forthrightly addressed.

Let’s be honest – tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic. Anyone who suggests otherwise isn’t being straight with you. It’s also not who we are as Americans.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

One of the best mental disciplines for people to implement is simply putting together a schedule or a task list and actually executing it. Write the list or the schedule the night before, and then do what you said you would do. Life becomes much better when you do that.

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

I’ve definitely seen bands before they made money kind of change their thing on the next tour, and I prefer it when it’s a little more raw.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

It is very hard to not be able to engage with people in a real and honest way because they either want something from me, or they see me as something that I simply am not.

Platitudes? Yes, there are platitudes. Platitudes are there because they are true.

For me, the way I stay consistent is through stand-up comedy.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

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

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

People have got to know whether or not their president is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook. I earned everything I’ve got.

I love that I can talk to my fans through Twitter, to cut out the middle man. Because I’ve done interviews where my words have gotten twisted, so it’s nice to be able to have things coming straight from me.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

The world remains ever the same.

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

Connectivity enables transparency for better government, education, and health.

If the writing is honest it cannot be separated from the man who wrote it.

When a person cannot deceive himself the chances are against his being able to deceive other people.

I’m tough when I have to be, tender when I should be. When you find a really tough guy, he’s not a predator. He doesn’t have to prove himself. Guys who have to pretend to be tough, they ain’t. I’m tough.

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.

I don’t believe in doing things to manufacture my body to appeal to what I think people might like.

I don’t have anything to hide.

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

A lie cannot live.

I looked the people of Louisiana in the eye and told them exactly what I thought in terms that normal people use.

I filed the MSRB Reform Act, along with Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Doug Jones, because the board that oversees the muni-bond market is too secretive and too incestuous. Its membership shares the same DNA. That means the rulebook for municipal bonds is in the hands of a board that resembles a revolving door of longtime industry confederates.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

I want to be an artist, an actress with integrity, and that includes all kinds of parts.

I find rebellion packaged by a major corporation a little hard to take seriously.