Quotes About Truth And Honesty

“They don't really listen to speeches or talks. They absorb incrementally, through hours and hours of observation. The sad truth about divorce is that it's hard to teach your kids about life unless you are living life with them: eating together, doing homework, watching Little League, driving them around endlessly, being bored with nothing to do, letting them listen while you do business, while you negotiate love and the frustrations and complications and rewards of living day in and out with your wife. Through this, they see how adults handle responsibility, honesty, commitment, jealousy, anger, professional pressures, and social interactions. Kids learn from whoever is around them the most.”

— Rob Lowe

“No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.”

— Emma Goldman

“An anarchist is like an undercover agent who plays the game of Reason in order to undercut the authority of Reason (Truth, Honesty, Justice and so on).”

— Paul Karl Feyerabend

“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”

— Spencer Johnson

“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world ... would do this, it would change the earth.”

— William Faulkner

“The good thing about kids is that they'll tell you the truth, straight-up, no strings attached, no holds barred honesty. The bad thing about kids is that they'll tell you the truth, straight-up, no strings attached, no holds barred honesty.”

— C.M. Stunich

“The point of self-reflection is, foremost, to clarify and to find honesty. Self-reflection is the way to throw self-lies out and face the truth-however painful it might be to admit that you were wrong. We seek consistency in ourselves, and so when we are faced with inconsistency, we struggle to deny. Denial has no place in self-reflection, and so it is incumbent upon a person to admit his errors, to embrace them and to move along in a more positive direction. We can fool ourselves for all sorts of reasons. Mostly for the sake of our ego, of course, but sometimes, I now understand, because we are afraid. For sometimes we are afraid to hope, because hope breeds expectation, and expectation can lead to disappointment. And”

— R.A. Salvatore

“Truth is female, since truth is beauty rather than handsomeness; this, Ridcully reflected as the council grumbled in, would certainly explain the saying that a lie could run around the world before Truth has got its, correction, her boots on, since she would have to choose which pair - the idea that any woman in a position to choose would have just one pair of boots being beyond rational belief.
Indeed, as a goddess she would have lots of shoes, and thus many choices: comfy shoes for home truths, hobnail boots for unpleasant truths, simple clogs for universal truths and possibly some kind of slipper for self-evident truth.
More important right now was what kind of truth he was going to have to impart to his colleagues, and he decided not on the whole truth, but instead on nothing but the truth, which dispensed with the need for honesty.”

— Terry Pratchett

“Most certainly not. Why face this with honesty and directness? It is so much more fun to dance around the truth, dodge the reality of the situation, which is that you are in love with this man, you share some kind of unhappy past with him ... and that he has feelings for you, as well. Why would you ever wish to deal with that head on?”

— Jess Michaels

“The greatest truth is honesty, and the greatest falsehood is dishonesty.”

— Abu Bakr

“Art, whose honesty must work through artifice, cannot avoid cheating truth.”

— Adrienne Rich

“The bourgeois novel is the greatest enemy of truth and honesty that was ever invented.”

— J.G. Ballard

“To be a child of the Third World is to be aware of the many different constituencies you have and how honesty and truth must always depend on context.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“There's just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.”

— Frank Ocean

“My theory is the root of a country artist is truth and honesty. For me, I look at Sam Hunt. The truth and the honest thing is we have southern roots, we were raised in a southern way, but we listen to Drake and other stuff, too.”

— Kelsea Ballerini

“Stephen King has inspired me with his humor and honesty, and his admonition that the author's job is to tell the truth.”

— Barry Eisler

“You want to try and bring a character to life in an honest a way as you possibly can. It doesn't matter whether he's a doctor, an actor, a car salesman or a captain of a starship. If you can bring truth and honesty to that character, then your audience will believe you.”

— Scott Bakula

“As he'd told me once, he had been the recipient of many I love yous over the years, but he'd never believed them because they hadn't been backed up with truth, trust, and honesty. The words meant little to him, which was why he refused to say them to me. I tried not to let him see how it hurt me that he wouldn't say them. I figured that was an adjustment I'd have to make to be with him.”

— Sylvia Day

“Acting is all about truth and honesty, and the sensitivity that's capable of transporting you.”

— Thomas Kretschmann

“I'm always going for truth and honesty.”

— Jill Soloway

“All stories should have some honesty and truth in them, otherwise you're just playing about.”

— Nigel Kneale

“I think my love of truth and honesty forces me to notice that the liberal intelligentsia of Western countries is betraying itself where Islam is concerned.”

— Richard Dawkins

“The mind knows the truth when your heart denies what it feels. When you don't feel safe to let people in it is because you're not ready to deal with the pain of honesty.”

— Shannon L. Alder

“[M]any believe that by being honest and open they are winning people's hearts and showing their good nature.They are greatly deluded. Honesty is actually a blunt instrument, which bloodies more than it cuts. Your honesty is likely to offend people; it is much more prudent to tailor your words, telling people what they want to hear rather than the coarse and ugly truth of what you feel or think. More important, by being unabashedly open you make yourself so predictable and familiar that it is almost impossible to respect or fear you, and power will not accrue to a person who cannot inspire such emotions.”

— Robert Greene

“Honesty is not found in revealing the truth, but in understanding how deeply afraid of it we are. To become honest is in effect to become fully and robustly incarnated into powerlessness.”

— David Whyte

“The Candor man wears a black suit with a white tie-Candor standard uniform. Their faction values honesty and sees the truth as black and white, so that is what they wear.”

— Veronica Roth

“And the faith that grows out of questioning is stronger than the faith born of blind acceptance. It can withstand the shocks of circumstance. Only he who questions the universe and questions it in utter honesty can grow in his comprehension of the truth.”

— James Dillet Freeman

“I am inspired by great food, theater, books, the beach, black-and-white photography, and great vocalists, like Dianne Reeves, Alice Smith, and Shirley Horn. I am inspired by my mentor Diana Castle, who is guiding me towards a truth and honesty in my life and work that I have always longed for.”

— Erica Tazel

“Wherever politics intrudes upon economic life, political success is readily attained by saying what people like to hear rather than what is demonstrably true. Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insi”

— Hans F. Sennholz

“Instead of safeguarding truth and honesty, the state then tends to become a major source of insincerity and mendacity.”

— Hans F. Sennholz

“Here's a news flash
writers are selfish people. Truth is, creative types like me are driven by one impulse
to make up a world in which we get to control everything and everyone. We decide who enters and who exits, what the weather will be, who will hook up with whom, who will win and who will lose. It makes us feel powerful and, in all honesty, has relatively little to do with thinking about what will make anyone else happy.”

— Victoria Laurie

“The novels I love, the ones I remember, the ones I re-read, have an empathetic human quality, or 'emotional truth'. This quality is difficult to fully define, but I always recognise it when I see it: it is different from honesty and more resilient than fact, something that exists not in the kind of fiction that explains but in the kind that shows.”

— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Somehow there is a certain honesty underground, a certain truth,”

— Christophe Agou

“I shall pursue a straight forward course deviating neither to the right or left so that comes what may I hope my real friends will never have to blush for me, so far as truth, honesty & fair dealings are concerned.”

— Zachary Taylor

“Sometimes I'm not so sure how healthy it is because it's exhausting to put all your emotion into your work, but I guess I should be thankful for that. I don't want the work to be about anything else but the truth and honesty.”

— Jose Parla

“But the others, those who tried to bring Jesus to life at the call of love, found it a cruel task to be honest. The critical study of the life of Jesus has been for theology a school of honesty. The world had never seen before, and will never see again, a struggle for truth so full of pain and renunciation as that of which the Lives of Jesus of the last hundred years contain the cryptic record.”

— Albert Schweitzer

“Of cases where a man is truthful both in speech and conduct when no considerations of honesty come in, from an habitual sincerity of disposition. Such sincerity may be esteemed a moral excellence; for the lover of truth, who is truthful even when nothing depends on it, will a fortiori be truthful when some interest is at stake, since having all along avoided falsehood for its own sake, he will assuredly avoid it when it is morally base; and this is a disposition that we praise.”

— Aristotle

“Before us lie two paths - honesty and dishonesty. The shortsighted embark on the dishonest path; the wise on the honest. For the wise know the truth; in helping others we help ourselves; and in hurting others we hurt ourselves. Character overshadows money, and trust rises above fame. Honesty is still the best policy.”

— Napoleon Hill

“What reaches an audience is honesty. If you're saying something truthful that's supposed to be a funny line, it's going to be funny. And if it's supposed to be a serious line, it's going to be serious. But, I don't think there's a distinction between how you play drama or comedy, if it's based in the truth.”

— Barbra Streisand

“The truth, or success, of any writer's story lies partly in its specificity and its emotional honesty.”

— Gail Caldwell

“Is not anyone with any degree of mental honesty conscious of telling lies all day long, both in talking and writing, simply because lies will fall into artistic shape when truth will not?”

— George Orwell

“In matters of honesty, there are no shortcuts; no little white lies, or big black lies, only the simple, honest truth spoken in total candor ... Being true is different than being honest.”

— Gordon B. Hinckley

“Your gift to God is honesty. God's gift to you is truth.”

— Leonard Jacobson

“It is always easier to deal in truth and honesty and follow these to their legitimate ends, than it is to construct and adjust a false superstructure upon a false base.”

— Charles Lindbergh

“[Success] always starts with the material; it always starts with the truth and honesty of the characters that you read in the screenplay and that's rarely something that can be remedied if it's simply not there by the time you shoot the film. Thank God we had that.”

— Leonardo DiCaprio

“Want of principle is power. Truth and honesty set a limit to our efforts, which impudence and hypocrisy easily overleap.”

— William Hazlitt

“The good I stand on is my truth and honesty.”

— William Shakespeare

“Rama Nama should come from the heart. In that event, Rama Nama could become an effective remedy against all ailments. A man who believes in Rama Nama would not make a fetish of the body but would regard it as a means of serving God. And for making it into a fit instrument for that purpose, Rama Nama is the sovereign means. To install Rama Nama in the heart requires infinite patience. It might even take ages. But the effort is worthwhile. Rama Nama cannot come from the heart unless one has cultivated the virtues of truth, honesty and purity within and without.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

“In practice [monetary management] is merely a high-sounding euphemism for continuous currency debasement. It consists of constant lying in order to support constant swindling. Instead of automatic currencies based on gold, people are forced to take managed currencies based on guile. Instead of precious metals they hold paper promises whose value falls with every bureaucratic whim. And they are suavely assured that only hopelessly antiquated minds dream of returning to truth and honesty and solvency and gold.”

— Henry Hazlitt