Benjamin Franklin Quotes

Do not consider anything for your interest which makes you break your word, quit your modesty or inclines you to any practice which will not bear the light or look the world in the face.

I take no actions that I wouldn't publicly recount. If you can't speak your deeds, then don't do them.

I learned one thing in Watergate: I was well-intentioned but rationalized illegal behavior. You cannot live your life other than walking in the truth. Your means are as important as your ends.

There's one thing very important to me in business and for the long-term: always be honest with people. For the past 60 years, I always pay my debts.

No man should advocate a course in private that he's ashamed to admit in public.

I've always told the truth. I've often been wrong - but I've never knowingly lied. Not in public life. Because I don't see the need to.

If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place.

Live in such a way that you would not be ashamed to sell your parrot to the town gossip.

Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.

I hate to spoil my own prospects, but I really don't respect the kiss-and-tell approach to public life at all, not at all.

It is very unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

I want to be as honest as I possibly can. I sleep better at night.

The most important thing to me is facing people head on and focusing on not disappointing the public.

If a man's public record be a clear one, if he has kept his pledges before the world, I do not inquire what his private life may have been.

Integrity is conforming reality to our words - in other words, keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.

We know that the wages of secrecy are corruption. We know that in secrecy error, undetected, will flourish and subvert.

If you have to keep a secret it's because you shouldn't be doing it in the first place

Let us have integrity and not write checks with our tongues which our conduct cannot cash.

When tempted to do any thing in secret, ask yourself if you would do it in public.

Integrity is honesty carried through the fibres of the being and the whole mind, into thought as well as action so that the person is complete in honesty. That kind of integrity I put above all else as an essential to leadership.

Honesty is largely a matter of information, of knowing that dishonesty is a mistake. Principle is not as powerful in keeping people straight as a policeman.

Personal integrity implies such trustworthiness and incorruptibility that we are incapable of being false to a trust or covenant.

I think you have an obligation to be honest.

I value my reputation. I work hard to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

I ran the wrong kind of business, but I did it with integrity.