Honesty refers to the quality or act of being truthful, transparent, and sincere in one’s thoughts, words, actions, and intentions. It involves presenting information, facts, and opinions accurately, without distortion or deceit. Honesty is a fundamental moral value and is often considered a crucial aspect of ethical behavior and trustworthy relationships. It entails being straightforward, admitting mistakes, and communicating openly, even when the truth might be uncomfortable or inconvenient. Practicing honesty contributes to building trust, fostering meaningful connections, and maintaining integrity in personal, professional, and social interactions.
Honesty Quotes
1. “Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure.”
— James Altucher
2. “Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.”
— Thomas Jefferson
3. “I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone of business.”
— Harvey S. Firestone
4. “The first step is, to be honest, and then to be noble.”
— Winston Churchill
5. “Truth never damages a cause that is just.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
6. “Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.”
— Mother Teresa
7. “The foundation stones for balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love, and loyalty.”
— Zig Ziglar
8. “Honesty is of God and dishonesty of the devil; the devil was a liar from the beginning.”
— Joseph B. Wirthlin
9. “The elegance of honesty needs no adornment.”
— Mary Browne
10. “Honesty is a very expensive gift, Don’t expect it from cheap people.”
— Warren Buffett
11. “Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.”
— John Lennon
12. “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”
— Virginia Woolf
13. “Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”
— Albert Einstein
14. “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
15. “True honesty is hard. Throughout my career, I’ve faced moments where I’ve needed to take an honest look at myself and face some very uncomfortable realities.”
— Les Brown
16. “I admire honesty more than any other trait.”
— Jerry Reinsdorf
17. “Honesty and loyalty are key.”
— Taylor Lautner
18. “Simple honesty of purpose in a man goes a long way in life if founded on a just estimate of himself and a steady obedience to the rule he knows and feels to be right.”
— Samuel Smiles
19. “It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.”
— Rick Riordan
20. “Honest people don’t hide their deeds.”
— Emily Brontë
21. “The establishment of any relationship, both individual and expert, is honesty.”
— Alexander Mejia
22. “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
— Spencer Johnson
23. “Friends are honest with each other. Even if the truth hurts.”
— Sarah Dessen
24. “Honesty is one of the most important parts of any marriage.”
— Amanda Thompson
25. “It’s difficult to honest with others when you continue lying to yourself.”
— Carlos Wallace
26. “We have no relationship without honesty.”
— Emily Giffin
27. “One honest relationship can be more productive than fistfuls of business cards.”
— Susan Cain
28. “I’d never managed anyone before, so I don’t have a lot of experience. But I’m lucky – I have a lot of team members who have a really honest relationship with me.”
— Ben Silbermann
29. “Honesty doesn’t always pay, but dishonesty always costs.”
— Michael Josephson
30. “Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.”
— Walter Anderson
31. “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
— Noël Coward
32. “All I’m ever looking for in my work in general is honesty and truth and people being real to themselves.”
— O Tillett Wright
33. “Honesty pays, but it don’t seem to pay enough to suit some people.”
— Frank McKinney
34. “If you tell the truth, you don’t need a long memory.”
— Jesse Ventura
35. “Honest hearts produce honest actions.”
— Brigham Young
36. “Always tell the truth. That way you don’t have to remember what you said.”
— Mark Twain
37. “Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world.”
— Thomas Carlyle
38. “Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it.”
— Mark Twain
39. “To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand.”
— William Shakespeare
40. “To be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful.”
— Edward R. Murrow
41. “To tell the truth is very difficult, and young people are rarely capable of it.”
— Leo Tolstoy
42. “Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children.”
— Oliver Wendell
43. “To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education.”
— John Ruskin
44. “The truth needs so little rehearsal.”
— Barbara Kingsolver
45. “It is better to suffer for truth than to prosper by falsehood.”
— Danish
46. “You don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.”
— Anne Lamott
47. “Though I am not naturally honest, I am sometimes so by chance.”
— William Shakespeare
48. “Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.”
— Henry David Thoreau
49. “An honest man is believed without an oath, for his reputation swears for him.”
— ELIZA COOK
50. “You cannot con an honest man.”
— Ally Carter
51. “You can fool people some of the time, but you can’t fool them all of the time.”
— Aesop
52. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
— Oscar Wilde
53. “The best thing about telling the truth is…you don’t have to remember what you said!”
— Unknown
54. “People have an innate sense of honesty and realness. It’s not up to you to put on a show or to impress anyone. Your job is to express who you are.”
— Joe Gaebel
55. “Pay what you owe and what you’re worth you’ll know.”
— Benjamin Franklin
56. “The real things haven’t changed. It is still best to be honest and truthful.”
— Laura Ingalls Wilder
57. “No legacy is as rich as honesty.”
— Unknown
58. “Living with integrity means: Speaking your truth, even though it might create conflict or tension.”
— Barbara De Angelis
59. “Honesty is the best policy.”
— Aesop
60. “Don’t ever regret being honest. Period.”
— Taylor Swift
61. “There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.”
— Charles Dickens
62. “People all over the nation are starved for honesty and common sense.”
— Ben Carson
63. “Brutal, inner honesty… The three scariest words on the planet, and yet, at the same time, the very KEY that unlocks all the doors.”
— Ken Dahl
64. “Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door.”
— Vernon Howard
65. “It is difficult, but not impossible, to conduct strictly honest business.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
66. “Honesty prospers in every condition of life.”
— Friedrich Schiller
67. “An honest man in politics shines more there than he would elsewhere.”
— Mark Twain
68. “Honesty has a power that very few people can handle.”
— Steven Aitchison
69. “If you’re not honest with yourself, how can you be truly honest with anyone else?”
— Paul Williams
70. “Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth-telling, truth speaking, truth living, and truth loving.”
— James E. Faust
71. “You can’t lie to your soul.”
— Irvine Welsh
72. “Hiding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn’t make you nice, it just makes you a liar.”
— Jenny O’Connell
73. “Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing easier than flattery.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
74. “To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.”
— Charles Dickens
75. “I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live up to what light I have.”
— Abraham Lincoln
76. “Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
— Khaled Hosseini
77. “You should not honor men more than truth.”
— Plato
78. “Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?”
— John Steinbeck
79. “Love is honesty. Love is a mutual respect for one another.”
— Simone Elkeles
80. “When you walk a life of honesty, you live a life of truth.”
— Therese Benedict
81. “The main trouble with being an honest man was that it lost you all your illusions.”
— James Jones
82. “If you are honest with yourself, your life will be so much more pleasant.”
— Jessica Zafra
83. “Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure that there is one less scoundrel in the world.”
— Thomas Carlyle
84. “The truth cuts like the sharpest knife I’ve ever known.”
— Tomi Adeyemi
85. “Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.”
— Mahatma Gandhi
86. “Let’s tell the truth to people. When people ask, ‘How are you?’ have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully.”
— Maya Angelou
87. “We are franker towards others than towards ourselves.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
88. “I think people respect honesty rather than hiding it.”
— Jack Whitehall
89. “What clients are really interested in is honesty, plus a baseline of competence.”
— Patrick Lencioni
90. “Honesty is often very hard. The truth is often painful. But the freedom it can bring is worth the trying.”
— Fred Rogers
91. “If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
— Marcus Aurelius
92. “Honesty will never break you.”
— Kate Hudson
93. “Honesty is something you can’t wear out.”
— Waylon Jennings
94. “Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
— Sigmund Freud
95. “To live a life of honesty and integrity is a responsibility of every decent person.”
— Noam Chomsky
96. “Speak with honesty. Think with sincerity. Act with integrity.”
— Unknown
97. “Being an honest person should be simple but being truly honest with others and yourself can be a real challenge at times.”
— Chris Hughes
98. “While all humankind unconsciously utilizes oxygen to sustain existence; integrity, in the converse, develops only through the conscious design of pursuing honesty.”
— Byron R. Pulsifer
99. “Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.”
— Plato
100. “All parents want their child to be honest but often forget to place emphasis on being trustworthy even though this is also a form of honesty.”
— James R. Morrison
101. “The greatest truth is honesty, and the greatest falsehood is dishonesty.”
— Abu Bakr
102. “Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness. Listen to it carefully.”
— Richard Bach
103. “Transparency, honesty, kindness, good stewardship, even humor, work in businesses at all times.”
— John Gerzema
104. “If two people can be honest with each other about everything, that’s probably the biggest key to success.”
— Taylor Lautner
105. “All men profess honesty as long as they can. To believe all men honest would be folly. To believe none so is something worse.”
— John Quincy Adams
106. “Confidence… thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.”
— Franklin D. Roosevelt
107. “Goodness is about character – integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like.”
— Dennis Prager
108. “There’s just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.”
— Frank Ocean
109. “Honesty starts with being ourselves, authentic and true to who we are and what we believe in, and that may not always be popular, but it will always let you follow your dreams and your heart.”
— Tabatha Coffey
110. “When you do something with a lot of honesty, appetite and commitment, the input reflects in the output.”
— A.R. Rahman
111. “Relationships feed on credibility, honesty, and consistency.”
— Scott Borchetta
112. “The high road is always respected. Honesty and integrity are always rewarded.”
— Scott Hamilton
113. “The true measure of life is not length, but honesty.”
— John Lyly
114. “Good design begins with honesty, asks tough questions, comes from collaboration and from trusting your intuition.”
— Freeman Thomas
115. “Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and ability to perform shall cease to exist.”
— Mary Kay Ash
116. “Loyalty and honesty, those are important.”
— William Shakespeare
117. “Be honest in your life, it creates positive energy, stopping all unfairness through life.”
— Fathima Bibi Joosab
118. “Honesty is perhaps just as important a factor in one’s communication skills as trust.”
— Ross Elkins
119. “It still takes a serious commitment and honest effort for your goals to come to fruition.”
— Alex Altman
120. “And if you learn to have those difficult conversations in a loving, honest, and responsible way, your relationships can become better than you ever thought they could.”
— Henry Cloud
121. “Confidence grows from being honest with myself because I know my strengths, weaknesses, capabilities and I am realistic and honest about what I can do.”
— Patricia A Gilpin-Hudson
122. “Healthy relationships of all kinds are usually composed of honesty, trust, and respect.”
— Ace McCloud
123. “Just like showing trust is essential in a marriage, it is also of vital significance to be completely honest with each other.”
— Christian Olsen
124. “You have to be able to understand what your insecurities are if you want to change them. In order to do this, you are going to have to be very honest with yourself.”
— Jennifer N Smith
125. “Honesty, truth and decency all link together- by loving all of these, we can improve our families, communities and our society.”
— Estella Eliot
126. “Working through conflict, we maintain and build a strong but flexible, honest but loving connection in our relationship.”
— Aaron F. Steinberg
127. “We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.”
— Michelle Obama
128. “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
— Groucho Marx
129. “Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.”
— Salvador Dali
130. “With people of limited ability, modesty is merely honesty. But with those who possess great talent, it is hypocrisy.”
— Arthur Schopenhauer
131. “Concentration is my motto – first honesty, then industry, then concentration.”
— Andrew Carnegie
132. “The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.”
— Arthur C. Clarke
133. “My parents taught me about the importance of qualities like kindness, respect, and honesty, and I realize how central values like these have been to me throughout my life.”
— Kate Middleton
134. “The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.”
— Billy Graham
135. “Honesty is never seen sitting astride the fence.”
— Lemuel K. Washburn
136. “Moral authority comes from following universal and timeless principles like honesty, integrity, and treating people with respect.”
— Stephen Covey
137. “Confidence in others’ honesty is no light testimony of one’s own integrity.”
— Michel de Montaigne
138. “An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.”
— Ayn Rand
139. “Honesty needs no disguise nor ornament; be plain.”
— Thomas Otway
140. “Compliments win friends, honesty loses them.”
— Rabindranath Tagore
141. “How is it that society professes to embrace the value of honesty when so few are found of it?”
— Wes Fesler
142. “It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
— Noel Coward
143. “[Islam] inspires countless individuals to lead lives of honesty, integrity, and morality.”
— George W. Bush
144. “The critics who love are the severe ones . . . we know our relationship must be based on honesty.”
— Judith Crist
145. “Commend a fool for his wit, or a rogue for his honesty and he will receive you into his favour.”
— Henry Fielding
146. “Honesty is as rare as a man without self-pity.”
— Stephen Vincent Benet
147. “Honesty leads to peace.”
— Veronica Roth
148. “Asking in faith requires honesty, effort, commitment, and persistence.”
— David A. Bednar
149. “Life demands honesty, the ability to face, admit, and express oneself.”
— Starhawk
150. “I’d rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn’t being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other’s sure to.”
— Truman Capote
151. “So everything lets us down, including curiosity and honesty and what we love best. Yes, said the voice, but cheer up, it’s fun in the end.”
— Roberto Bolano
152. “I learned so much from listening to people. And all I knew was, the only thing I had was honesty and openness.”
— Audre Lorde
153. “Honesty will be found on every experiment, to be the best and only true policy; let us then as a Nation be just.”
— George Washington
154. “You learn how to do good work by being honest with yourself.”
— Rodney Crowell
155. “Honest plain words best pierce the ear of grief.”
— William Shakespeare
156. “Honesty is the key to a relationship. If you can fake that, you’re in.”
— Courteney Cox
157. “Honesty does not always bring a response of love, but it is absolutely essential to it.”
— Ray Blanton
158. “In a world of lies and liars, an honest work of art is always an act of social responsibility.”
— Robert McKee
159. “If you expect honesty, be honest. If you expect forgiveness, forgive. If you expect a whole person, you have to be a whole person.”
— Kristen Crockett
160. “Honesty is a fine foundation from which to build upon; for if one was to really know what another thinks and how they feel…they would surely treat each other differently.”
— Jeremy Aldana
161. “We have to be honest about what we want and take risks rather than lie to ourselves and make excuses to stay in our comfort zone.”
— Roy Bennett
162. “Honesty: what a refreshing slap in the face it is.”
— Timothy M. Brenner
163. “There is nothing you will ever do that is more important than being honest about who you really are.”
— Bryant McGill
164. “If you’re not honest with yourself, life will never be honest with you.”
— Leigh Brackett
165. “To say someone you love them is easy, but to prove that love, you would need steadfast honesty, loyalty, and faithfulness.”
— Aiyaz Uddin
166. “Honesty is the incomparable challenge that circulates in your heartbeat and breath.”
— Ehsan Sehgal
167. “Would you still declare an honesty, if you know that your honesty will cost other people’s lives?”
— Titon Rahmawan
168. “Relationships are built on love, respect, and honesty but they need communication to survive.”
— Nitin Namdeo
169. “Honesty is very important in business. It’s important to customers, it’s important to investors and it’s important to markets.”
— Hendrith Vanlon Smith Jr
170. “Honesty and grace. You can try to find something better beyond that, but you won’t.”
— Gary Shteyngart
171. “Lies and egoism destroy. Honesty and altruism create.”
— Maxime Lagacé
172. “I write. I write about how I felt and what I’ve been through. There’s no harm in being honest.”
— Laika Constantino
173. “I may not be honest all the time, but at least I am not greedy all of the time.”
— Anthony T. Hincks
174. “Honesty refines and beautifies your character and life.”
— Ehsan Sehgal
175. “The shock value of honesty was always greater than that of the most convincing lie.”
— Grace Draven
