Honesty Quotes

It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. ~Henry Louis Mencken, A Little Book in C Major, 1916

If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. ~Mark Twain

Who lies for you will lie against you. ~Bosnian Proverb

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. ~Abraham Lincoln

Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. ~Thomas Carlyle

A half truth is a whole lie. ~Yiddish Proverb

A lie will easily get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie. ~Charles Edward Montague, Disenchantment

Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind. ~Austin O’Malley

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent. ~William Blake, “Auguries of Innocence,” Poems from the Pickering Manuscript

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold. ~Aristotle

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie: A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. ~George Herbert

With lies you may get ahead in the world – but you can never go back. ~Russian proverb

Honesty is the rarest wealth anyone can possess, and yet all the honesty in the world ain’t lawful tender for a loaf of bread. ~Josh Billings

The hardest tumble a man can make is to fall over his own bluff. ~Ambrose Bierce

A lie has speed, but truth has endurance. ~Edgar J. Mohn

When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback. ~Bill Copeland

Truth is the most valuable thing we have, so I try to conserve it. ~Mark Twain

Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence. ~Lemuel K. Washburn, Is The Bible Worth Reading And Other Essays, 1911

A lie may take care of the present, but it has no future. ~Author Unknown

We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. ~Tad Williams

Truth fears no questions. ~Unknown

There are only two ways of telling the complete truth – anonymously and posthumously. ~Thomas Sowell

Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom. ~Thomas Jefferson