Honesty

"He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave."
        --George Berkeley

"When I use a word...it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less....The question is...which is to be master -- thatīs all."
        --Lewis Carroll, (Humpty Dumpty)

"If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything."
        --Confucius

"I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Donīt trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if anything is to be got by it."
        --Charles Dickens

"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying-to others and to yourself."
        --Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"He does not believe, that does not live according to his belief."
        --Thomas Fuller

"The spirit of truth and the spirit of freedom -- they are the pillars of society."
        --Henrik Ibsen

"He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the worldīs believing him."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"[F]alsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions."
        --Thomas Jefferson

"If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you canīt fool all of the people all the time."
        --Abraham Lincoln

"Peace if possible, but truth at any rate."
        --Martin Luther

"It is annoying to be honest to no purpose."
        --Ovid

"We cannot afford to differ on the question of honesty if we expect our republic permanently to endure. Honesty is . . . an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matters not how brilliant his capacity."
        --Theodore Roosevelt

"Honesty is not so much a credit as an absolute prerequisite to efficient service to the public. Unless a man is honest, we have no right to keep him in public life; it matter not how brilliant has capacity..."
        --Theodore Roosevelt

"Observe, I do not mean to suggest that the custom of lying has suffered any decay or interruption -- no, for the Lie, as Virtue, as Principle, is eternal; the Lie, as a recreation, a solace, a refuge in time of need, the fourth Grace, the tenth Muse, man's best and surest friend, is immortal, and cannot perish from the earth while this club remains.
     My complaint, simply concerns the decay of the art of lying. No high-minded man, no man of right feeling, can contemplate the lumbering and slovenly lying of the present day without grieving to see a noble art so prostituted. ... If this finest of the fine art arts had everywhere received the attention, encouragement, and conscientious practice and development which this club has devoted to it, I should not need to utter this lament, or cry a single tear. I do not say this to flatter. I say it in a spirit of just and appreciative recognition."
        --Mark Twain, address to Historical and Antiquarian Club of Hartford, 1882