Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

I don't like hypocrisy—even in international relations.

Good, bad or indifferent, I'm transparent with my opinions and what I believe. I just don't think in politics you can be that way.

No lying knight or lying priest ever prospered in any age, but especially not in the dark ones. Men prospered then only in following an openly declared purpose, and preaching candidly beloved and trusted creeds.

I think people are distrustful of politicians and are looking for someone who is telling the truth with no hidden agenda.

I like to say it like it is.

I abhor hypocrisy.

When you look at my campaign, I don't go around sugarcoating things.

I would despise myself if I thought that I was procuring your votes by concealing my opinions, and by avowing one set of principles in one part of the state and a different set in another.

Presidential politics has to be about truth telling and not pandering to the public.

I am not a politician. A politician is someone who does things to get elected. He's a guy who says things to please the public, that he thinks the public wants to hear, and his story changes with every passing day. I want to be elected, but I am not going to say a damn thing for your benefit, or that person's benefit out there on the street, or anybody's

I know that some people shy away from what I say. They think it is too blunt, but when you don't give people that, they feel like you are being fake and you're not telling the truth. So it's like, you want me to tell the truth, but when I do, it's too much for you.

I'm someone who says what he thinks.

The badge of honesty is simplicity.

The world is looking, not for Christians who are perfect, but for Christians who are honest and who are willing to be honest with some of our contradictions and hypocrisy.

I aim to tell the truth about any subject, not a romance or fantasy, not avoid the truth.

Be honest. Be honest with yourself, be honest with, you know, your fellow politicians. This is a rare quality of politicians.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

In order to be transparent, you really have to be completely honest and open, so that's how I've lived my life, and that's where I am now. I am completely transparent. There's nothing that you can't ask me and nothing I won't talk about.

I'm never going to take the view that I should say whatever I need to say in order to achieve something. Because that implies a level of dishonesty.

Don't be 'consistent', but be simply true.

I will tell the truth wherever I please.

I make an effort to keep it as real as I possibly can.

I always said what I thought and I didn't hold anything back.

Well, if I am not vulgar, neither is my book. I wrote myself. Suggestiveness is always vulgar. But truth never. My book is not even remotely suggestive. I call things by their names. That is all.

I want to tell you this: you cannot get the robe of hypocrisy on you so thick that the sharp eye of childhood will not see through every veil.