William Shenstone Quotes

As a general thing, I have not 'duped the world' nor attempted to do so... I have generally given people the worth of their money twice told.

You have to have honesty to the product. You have to meet consumer expectations. You give them value for their money and give them a product that they need. I don't see anything wrong with all these things. And I don't think it's a bad thing to meet consumers' expectations.

If everyone in the music business were brutally honest about what their intentions were then you could sort things out, but it's all smoke and mirrors.

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

You've got to build a relationship. You can't just deal with people when it's business. If it is, then you always have to assume that they have an angle when they come at you.

The merchants of old Cairo are honest in their dealings, and if one of them is caught cheating a customer, he is mounted on a camel with a bell in his hand and paraded about the city, ringing the bell and crying out, 'I have committed a misdemeanor and am suffering reproach. Whosoever tells a lie is rewarded with public disgrace.' The grocers, druggists, and peddlers furnish sacks for everything they sell, whether glass, pottery, or papers; therefore, there is no need for shoppers to take their own bags with them

We suppose mankind more honest than they are.

An untruth must be spoken, where need requires. For whether men lie, or say true, it is with one and the same object. Men lie, because they think to gain by deceiving others; and speak the truth, because they expect to get something by their true speaking, and to be trusted afterwards in more important matters. Thus, though their conduct is so opposite, the end of both is alike. If there were no gain to be got, your true-speaking man would tell untruths as much as your liar, and your liar would tell the truth as much as your true-speaking man.

When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.

Promise everything to anyone, unless clear obligation prevents it. Only live up to those promises which are of advantage to you.

I love that Barry Seal is working for the CIA, and he's an awful liar. It just goes to how honest this character is at the end of the day, even as he rips off the country and the world to the tune of becoming one of the wealthiest men in America. There's an innate honesty, a purity to him.

The word virtue is as useful to self-interest as the vices.

I think one of the things that, at least, I found out over - and many have in the industry - is that of all the customer service desires and needs, price is one of them.

Politicians aren't special. They lie the same way we all do, revealing their true nature under pressure.

People are always trying to be on top. And not always with a macabre agenda, but I think that people are desperately trying to remain in control, rather than being honest.

Never trade a secret, you'll always get the short end of the bargain.

People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. You should be an open book, be transparent.

We're all liars when it serves our purpose.

I suppose I ought to think up some dramatic, quotable phrase for Public Information and the history books, but I'm damned if any of them come to mind. Besides, admitting the truth wouldn't sound too good. The truth, Russell, is that now the moment's here, I'm scared shitless. Somehow I don't think even Public Information could turn that into good copy.

A man of business will often deceive you without the slightest scruple, but he will absolutely refuse to commit a theft.

When one wanted one's interests looking after whatever the cost, it was not so well for a lawyer to be over honest, else he might not be up to other people's tricks.

We may argue eloquently that 'Honesty is the best Policy' - unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty.

Honesty is a principle, and we have our moral agency to determine how we will apply this principle. We have the agency to make choices, but ultimately we will be accountable for each choice we make. We may deceive others, but there is One we will never deceive. From the Book of Mormon we learn, "The keeper of the gate is the Holy One of Israel; and he employeth no servant there; and there is none other way save it be by the gate; for he cannot be deceived, for the Lord God is his name." [2 Nephi 9:41]

An autobiography is the truest of all books; for while it inevitably consists mainly of extinctions of the truth, shirkings of the truth, partial revealments of the truth, with hardly an instance of plain straight truth, the remorseless truth is there, between the lines, where the author-cat is raking dust upon it which hides from the disinterested spectator neither it nor its smell... the result being that the reader knows the author in spite of his wily diligences.

He who freely praises what he means to purchase, and he who enumerates the faults of what he means to sell, may set up a partnership with honesty.