Honest 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


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 take is to fall off his own bluff. - Ambrose Bierce, Epigram. (c.1906) Quoted by Ralph Alfred Habas, Morals for Moderns, p.214  [Source information per Burton Egbert Stevenson (1872–1962) —tεᖇᖇ¡·g]


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


I never lie because I don't fear anyone. You only lie when you're afraid. - John Gotti





A truth that's told with bad intent
Beats all the lies you can invent.
- William Blake (1757-1827), "Auguries of Innocence"


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


I don't mind lying, but I hate inaccuracy. - Samuel Butler, Note-Books, 1912




There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other. - O. Henry, Rolling Stones, 1912


Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children. - Oliver Wendell


When you tell a lie, you steal someone’s right to the truth. - Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner, 2003


The truth brings with it a great measure of absolution, always. - R.D. Laing





If you want to ruin the truth, stretch it. - Author Unknown


The truth is more important than the facts. - Frank Lloyd Wright


Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited. - James Cardinal Gibbons


Dare to be honest and fear no labor. - Robert Burns


Respect for the truth is an acquired taste. - Mark Van Doren, Liberal Education, 1943


A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on. - Winston Churchill





If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field. - Michel Eyquem de Montaigne


When a man lies, he murders some part of the world. - Rospo Pallenberg and John Boorman, Excalibur, based on Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory


Honesty doesn't always pay, but dishonesty always costs. - Michael Josephson, whatwillmatter.com


A lie is just the truth waiting to be itself. - Terri Guillemets


It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying. - Michel de Montaigne, translated from French


People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty. - Richard J. Needham


There is always a way to be honest without being brutal. - Arthur Dobrin


If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships. - Bertrand Russell


It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason


Beware of the half truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half. - Author Unknown


When truth is divided, errors multiply. - Eli Siegel, Damned Welcome


Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it. - Emily Dickinson


Honesty pays, but it don't seem to pay enough to suit some people. - Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard


A little candor never leaves me. It is what protects me. - Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin


Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. - Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian. - John Updike


No mask like open truth to cover lies,
As to go naked is the best disguise.
- William Congreve


Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself. - Arthur Schopenhauer, translated from German


Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so. - Mark Twain, Notebook, 1935


Reality is bad enough. Why should I tell the truth? - Patrick Sky


Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. - Slovenian Proverb


Always tell the truth. Even if you have to make it up. - Author Unknown


The cruelest lies are often told in silence. - Adlai Stevenson


The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do. - E.V. Lucas


The highest compact we can make with our fellow is — "Let there be truth between us two forevermore." - Ralph Waldo Emerson


Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. - Mark Twain, Following the Equator


Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. - Oscar Wilde


Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. - Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


The truth needs so little rehearsal. - Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams


Society can exist only on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks. - Lin Yutang


As important in a trusting relationship as the truths you share are the lies you never have to tell. - Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation. - Saki


Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships. - Author Unknown


Somewhere between the honest truth and the deceptive lie is the deceptive truth and the honest lie. - Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen. - Homer Simpson, The Simpsons


There's one way to find out if a man is honest — ask him. If he says, "Yes," you know he is a crook. - Groucho Marx


One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. - Mark Twain


Someday a computer will give a wrong answer to spare someone's feelings, and man will have invented artificial intelligence. - Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com


It is always the best policy to tell the truth, unless, of course, you are an exceptionally good liar. - Jerome K. Jerome


Always tell the truth. If you can't always tell the truth, don't lie. - Author Unknown


I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won't. - Mark Twain


Am I lying to you if I tell you the same lie I tell myself? - Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com