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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
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
The truth brings with it a great measure of absolution, always. —
R.D. Laing
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick
themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. — Winston
Churchill
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
Respect for the truth is an acquired taste. — Mark Van Doren,
Liberal Education, 1943
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
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
People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the
brutality than out of the honesty. — Richard J. Needham
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
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 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
The truth needs so little rehearsal. — Barbara Kingsolver, Animal
Dreams
A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is
putting on its shoes. — Mark Twain
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
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
It takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen. — "Homer
Simpson," from the television show 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
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
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Quotations about Honesty