Honesty without kindness, humor, and goodheartedness can be just mean.
—Pema Chödrön in When Things Fall Apart
I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.
—Malcolm X
When you can’t be honest with people, you can’t ever relax with them.
—Dorothy Koomson in My Best Friend’s Girl
I make mistakes; I'll be the second to admit it.
—Jean Kerr
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.
—H. L. Mencken
Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.
—Don Marquis
It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
—H. L. Mencken
I don't deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always in it.
—Flannery O'Connor
If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.
—Virginia Woolf
Barring that natural expression of villainy which we all have, the man looked honest enough.
—Mark Twain
If you look at history, even recent history, you see that there is indeed progress.… Over time, the cycle is clearly, generally upwards. And it doesn't happen by laws of nature. And it doesn't happen by social laws.… It happens as a result of hard work by dedicated people who are willing to look at problems honestly, to look at them without illusions, and to go to work chipping away at them, with no guarantee of success—in fact, with a need for a rather high tolerance for failure along the way, and plenty of disappointments.
—Noam Chomsky
Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then—we elected them.
—Lily Tomlin
I am still looking for the modern equivalent of those Quakers who ran successful businesses, made money because they offered honest products and treated their people decently, worked hard, spent honestly, saved honestly, gave honest value for money, put back more than they took out, and told no lies. This business creed, sadly, seems long forgotten.
—Anita Roddick
We may argue eloquently that "honesty is the best policy." Unfortunately, the moment honesty is adopted for the sake of policy it mysteriously ceases to be honesty.
—Dorothy L. Sayers
Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.
—Thomas Carlyle