Harry Emerson Fosdick Quotes

Only the difference between truth and lies, courage and cowardice.

Truth made you a traitor as it often does in a time of scoundrels.

Dishonesty is a forsaking of permanent for temporary advantages.

I always say the truth is best even when we find it unpleasant. Any rat in a sewer can lie. It's how rats are. It's what makes them rats. But a human doesn't run and hide in dark places, because he's something more. Lying is the most personal act of cowardice there is.

Never tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through it

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

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.

I don't like being lied to.

He is only honest who is not discovered.

He who purposely cheats his friend would cheat his God.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

There are many who say more than the truth on some occasions, and balance the account with their consciences by saying less than the truth on others. But the fact is that they are in both instances as fraudulant as he would be that exacted more than his due from his debtors, and paid less than their due to his creditors.

Truth, but not the whole truth, must be the invariable principle of every man who hath either religion, honour, or prudence. Thosewho violate it, may be cunning, but they are not able. Lies and perfidy are the refuge of fools and cowards.

In this age, lies were the universal lubricant of the culture. A love of Truth and commitment to it were seldom rewarded and were often punished.

I hate a liar. Maybe because I'm such a good one myself, heh? Anyway, to find someone has told an out and out lie puts him on the other side of the fence from me for all time.

Honesty is praised and left in the cold.

Honesty is not only the deepest policy, but the highest wisdom; since, however difficult it may be for integrity to get on, it is a thousand times more difficult for knavery to get off; and no error is more fatal than that of those who think that Virtue has no other reward because they have heard that she is her own.

A good man will not lie, although it be for his profit.

You never feel good when you lie. It doesn't matter how much you want something, if you lie to somebody you love, and they actually, sincerely believe you, you feel like a cockroach that needs some serious Raid action.

He who has once deviated from the truth, usually commits perjury with as little scruple as he would tell a lie.

If I have one wish which is greater than another, it is, if I had the power, to make men do right; to make them stop their swearing, their lying, their deceiving, to stop trying to injure the innocent, and begin to be honest and upright in all their dealings with one another and honor the name of the Deity.

I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception. It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance.

Unethical conduct is actually the conduct of destruction and fear; lies are told because one is afraid of the consequences should one tell the truth; thus, the liar is inevitably a coward, the coward is inevitably a liar.

Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe the one thing naturally begets the other.