Robert E. Lee Quotes

In the long run, I believe that honesty is definitely the best policy. One can get away by being dishonest for a short term, but ultimately, honesty is what pays.

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

Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.

I wish I could be honest and true, but truth as I see it is not something abstract, a pious generality---It is justice at work, righteous, demanding, disciplined, sincere and unswerving; otherwise, it is not, it cannot be truth at all.

Honesty is the best policy, I will stick to that. The good shall have my hand and heart, but the bad neither foot nor fellowship. And in my mind, the main point of governing, is to make a good beginning.

Would that the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy, might be laid to heart; that a sense of the true aim of life might elevate the tone of politics and trade till public and private honor become identical.

An honest man's the noblest work of God.

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

Never say anything that, down inside, you think is wrong.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

A good man with a good conscience doesn't walk so fast.

Every night I go over what I did in the day, in ethical or moral terms. Have I treated people properly? Did I tell the truth?

In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.

There is no real excellence in all of this world which can be separated from right living.

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.

Live truth instead of professing it.

It is almost impossible to imagine that any one could be so insensible to the high morality of Mr. Mill's character as to suggest to him any course of conduct that was not entirely upright and consistent.

I don't think lying has any ultimate justification. I don't think it ever leads to anything positive. The good fight to have is not to lie. That's one of the challenges in a way.

In all my public and private acts as your president, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.

Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.

My pet peeve and my goal in life is to somehow get an adjective for 'integrity' in the dictionary. 'Truthful' doesn't really cover it, or 'genuine.' It should be like 'integritus.'

My future is righteousness.

I do not believe in hypocrisy.

Honesty, like my mama always says, is always the best policy.

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.