Top 100 Quotes About Dishonesty
#1. I am a politician which means I am a liar and a crook. When I am not kissing babies I am stealing their lollypops.
Tom Clancy
#2. If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether.
Neil Postman
#4. Whether people care enough about local news to pay for it is, sadly, an entirely different question than whether our democracy requires a strong watchdog function at the local level to ensure safeguards against abuse, chicanery, and outright dishonesty.
Eric Alterman
#5. Where questions of religion are concerned, people are guilty of every possible sort of dishonesty and intellectual misdemeanor.
Sigmund Freud
#6. But spectacular lies don't need to be perfect. They rely less on the liar's skill than on the listener's expectations and wishes. After Mark's dishonesty was exposed, I understood how much I wised that what he had told me had been true.
Siri Hustvedt
#7. Honesty is for the most par less profitable than dishonesty.
Plato
#8. What is the good of a man being honest in his worship of dishonesty?
G.K. Chesterton
#10. (aside) Oh, you are well tuned now,
But I'll set down the pegs that make this music,
As honest as I am.
William Shakespeare
#11. The fear of loss, in one form or another, is the motivator behind all conscious and unconscious dishonesties.
David Whyte
#12. In the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense [ ... ] They are thrown back upon themselves for their rating.
Howard Thurman
#13. There is no well defined boundary line 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 the one domain and sometimes in the other.
O. Henry
#14. We've all become so conscious of how we'll be perceived and so frightened to
possibly offend someone that we've filtered ourselves to what borders on dishonesty. Sure, as my wife constantly reminds me, you don't have to say everything you think; but when did speaking plainly become such a sin?
Aaron Blaylock
#15. Any attorney with a conscience always speaks the truth. An attorney can and should practice law in a scrupulous manner, but some dishonest attorneys disregard ethical mandates in order to win. Unethical attorneys shape their clients stories, which is a fancy way of assisting them tell a fib.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#16. It's been my observation, after years in the [insurance] business, that a certain percent of the population simply can't resist the urge to cheat.
Sue Grafton
#17. A partial truth is nothing more than an entire lie.
Fred Munoz
#18. There seems little correlation between poverty and honesty. One would rather expect the opposite; dishonesty may not always pay but surely it sometimes does
Milton Friedman
#19. Dishonesty is never justified. God will never approve, and even your own conscience will rise up to condemn you sooner or later.
Billy Graham
#20. Just as some people may conceal their own sinfulness thus seeming better than the norm, others expose their own sinfulness thus seeming worse than the norm.
Criss Jami
#21. In his case, what had been hardness became cruelty, while a tendency to bluff became plain dishonesty. He often lied without hesitation and assumed that others lied to him.
William L. Shirer
#22. That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets.
Amy Tan
#23. This culture of mandatory happiness actually promotes dishonesty and more suffering.
Tullian Tchividjian
#24. The human heart is so steeped in self-deception that it can easily outrun its own lies. It can use even meticulous honesty as a form of dishonesty, a way of saying to God, "Look how honest I am.
Andrew Klavan
#25. There is nothing worse than words of kindness that lie.
Juvenal
#26. Honesty is of God and dishonesty of the devil; the devil was a liar from the beginning.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#27. The despicable crone known as Mombi stands accused of high witchery, gross dishonesty, untold crimes against monkeys, outrageous trespassing, and general unpleasantness. Also, she is extremely unattractive. Miss Amy, do you speak for the witch?
Danielle Paige
#28. My claims were justified in all men's sight; I put my trust in equity and right; Yet, to my horror and the world's disgrace, Justice is mocked, and I have lost my case! A scoundrel whose dishonesty is notorious Emerges from another lie victorious!
Moliere
#29. Lack of clarity is always a sign of dishonesty.
Celia Green
#30. There was nothing she would ever change about him , except for who he thought she was.
R.J. Groves
#31. Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
George Carlin
#32. Honesty whispers, Don't get pricked by the thorns of lie.
Angelica Hopes
#33. If you can be free from pride, self-pity, self-centeredness, selfishness, jealousy, envy, intolerance, impatience, greed, gluttony, lust, sloth, arrogance, and dishonesty, then there is a state of serenity and connectedness within.
Russell Brand
#34. We called one's lifestyle a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one's whole situation ... We don't want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives.
Ernest Becker
#35. By 'aha' she means 'one minute' Stephano claims he knows nothing about snakes, the next he claims he is an expert! By 'aha' she means 'Stephano has been lying to us'. By 'aha' she means 'we've finally exposed his dishonesty to you'! By 'aha' she means 'aha'!
Lemony Snicket
#36. As we deal with our fellow men in petty dishonesty or in more daring fraud, so will we deal with God.
Ellen G. White
#37. I don't want to lie. I dislike dishonesty. And I work in Hollywood, a town and a business that relies on a lot of falsehoods with people hiding behind different facades. I don't want to be a part of that.
David Arquette
#38. There is no greater dishonesty than man effecting his own private gains at the expense of others.
Leonard Read
#39. I despise the rituals of fake friendship. I wish we could just claw each other's eyes out and call it a day; instead we put on huge radiant smiles and spout compliments until our teeth hurt from the saccharine sweetness of it all.
Jody Gehrman
#40. I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.
Oscar Wilde
#41. He hated dishonesty-- or lack of courage-- more than anything.
Elizabeth Strout
#42. All historical writing, even the most honest, is unconsciously subjective, since every age is bound, in spite of itself, to make the dead perform whatever tricks it finds necessary for its own peace of mind.
Carl Lotus Becker
#43. Honesty means nothing until you are tested under circumstances where you are sure you could get away with dishonesty.
Dorothy Parker
#44. My father was a businessman. We had discussions about honesty and dishonesty.
John Cullum
#45. I might point out that the rich do not so much buy honesty as curtains to cover dishonesty.
G.K. Chesterton
#46. Bullshit makes the flowers grow and that is beautiful
Gregory Hill
#47. Honesty is largely a matter of information, of knowing that dishonesty is a mistake. Principle is not as powerful in keeping people straight as a policeman.
E.W. Howe
#48. How is it possible that our parents lied to us?"
"Lets see: Santa, the Tooth Fairy,the Easter bunny,um, God. You're the prettiest kid in school. This wont hurt a bit. Your face will freeze like that ... "
"Everythings going to be alright.
Brian K. Vaughan
#49. I can overlook the lie; what's harder to ignore is the grotesque way it has marred your character.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#50. A rich man is an honest man
no thanks to him; for he would be a double knave, to cheat mankind when he had no need of it: he has no occasion to press upon his integrity, nor so much as to touch upon the borders of dishonesty.
Daniel Defoe
#51. The 'fires'n that produce thick, rarely innocent, often strategic smoke should therefore be scrutinized. they should be known and identified; and when they involve dishonesty, lies, or manipulation, they they should be ignored.
Tariq Ramadan
#52. The hypocrisy seems pathological among the stars. And yet we desperately want to believe Armstrong is immune to dishonesty in the same way everyone wanted to grant McGwire a pass in 1998.
Selena Roberts
#53. What happens when you narrow your definition to what is convenient, or what is fashionable, or what is expected, is dishonesty by silence.
Audre Lorde
#54. Even if, as is generally the case, everything that the ad says about the product is scrupulously honest, or at any rate scrupulously avoids outright dishonesty, the implication of the direct address of most commercials - that the announcer speaks with the viewer's welfare at heart - is fraudulent.
Michael Schudson
#56. There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.
Benjamin Franklin
#57. Finn was an enigma wrapped in a riddle coated in misdirection. He was a burrito of dishonesty.
Molly Harper
#58. Dishonesty in government is the business of every citizen. It is not enough to do your own job. There's no particular virtue in that. Democracy isn't a gift. It's a responsibility.
Dalton Trumbo
#59. Knowledge is a matter of science and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. What is required is definitely the reverse - honesty and modesty.
Mao Zedong
#60. The trouble with excuses, however, is that they become inevitably difficult to believe after they've been used a couple of times.
Scott Spencer
#61. Unfortunately in today's world a liar seems to be more reliable than a truthful honest man.
Munia Khan
#62. Of evils current upon earth The worst is money. Money 'tis that sacks Cities, and drives men forth from hearth and home; Warps and seduces native innocence, And breeds a habit of dishonesty.
Sophocles
#63. Secrecy, censorship, dishonesty, and blocking of communication threaten all the basic needs.
Abraham Maslow
#64. The sanctified body is one whose hands are clean. The stain of dishonesty is not on them, the withering blight of ill-gotten gain has not blistered them, the mark of violence is not found upon them. They have been separated from every occupation that could displease God or injure a fellow-man.
A.B. Simpson
#65. Our world is very dishonest, and our leaders encourage dishonesty by setting bad examples - by lying, being corrupt, and using political sleight of hand to sustain power.
Stuart Wilde
#66. Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accept the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay-and claims a halo for his dishonesty.
Robert A. Heinlein
#67. People on the worldly path, to them 'we' say, 'Practice complete honesty. If you cannot do that, then practice honesty within principle of limits. If you cannot do that and if you practice dishonesty, do it within limits. This principle is indeed what will take you further ahead.
Dada Bhagwan
#68. Lies are like cockroaches, for every one you discover there are many more that are hidden.
Gary Hopkins
#69. Never hide things from hardcore thinkers. They get more aggravated, more provoked by confusion than the most painful truths.
Criss Jami
#70. Honesty is the best Policy is the Capitalistic thought as it gives free of cost Security to their assets and to their investments........
Tarif Naaz
#71. There is nothing I detest so much as the contortions of these great time-and-lip servers, these affable dispensers of meaningless embraces, these obliging utterers of empty words, who view every one in civilities
Moliere
#72. But deep prayer, prolonged prayer, is a terrible mirror - kneel there long enough and everything shows. There's no way out of eventually seeing your phoniness and dishonesty.
Tim Farrington
#73. The moral world has no particular objection to vice, but an insuperable repugnance to hearing vice called by its proper name.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#75. The hype cheapens the hyped, as right things are then made wrong by exaggeration.
Criss Jami
#76. They call good evil and evil good. There are those who are so easily offended that they lose their ability to ever discern any truth, and this is often derived from a sort of frenzy by way of their own masked prejudice.
Criss Jami
#77. Those partial to drink were hiding faults and dishonesty. They were sloppy souls, even the ones with pleasant manners and fine noses.
Sarah Hall
#78. In all common ordinary cases, we see intuitively at first view what is out duty, what is the honest part. This is the ground of the observation, that the first thought is often the best. In these cases, doubt and deliberation is itself dishonesty; as it was in Balaam upon the second message.
Joseph Butler
#79. It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.
Bertrand Russell
#80. Whoever claims any right that he is unwilling to accord to his fellow-men is dishonest and infamous.
Robert G. Ingersoll
#81. Mundus vult decipi: the world wants to be deceived. The truth is too complex and frightening; the taste for the truth is an acquired taste that few acquire ... .
... .The world winks at dishonesty. the world does not call it dishonesty
Walter Kaufmann
#82. Its author can be excused of dishonesty only on the grounds that before deceiving others he has taken great pains to deceive him-self'.
Richard Dawkins
#83. Success consists in obtaining the largest number of marks with the strictest economy of knowledge. It is a deliberate cultivation of disloyalty to truth, of intellectual dishonesty, of a foolish imposition by which the mind is encouraged to rob itself.
Anonymous
#84. Put a thief among honest men and they will eventually relieve him of his watch.
Flann O'Brien
#85. Dishonesty is the raw material not of quacks only, but also in great part dupes.
Thomas Carlyle
#86. It is a man's own dishonesty, his crimes, his wickedness, and boldness, that takes away from him soundness of mind; these are the furies, these the flames and firebrands, of the wicked.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
#87. A rational man never distorts or corrupts his own standards and judgment in order to appeal to the irrationality, stupidity, or dishonesty of others.
Ayn Rand
#88. There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as 'moral indignation,' which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue.
Erich Fromm
#89. Those who have the immense dishonesty to fight with a ballot box in one hand and a rifle in the other have no place in democratic politics.
Neil Kinnock
#90. A DEAD STATESMAN
I could not dig: I dared not rob:
Therefore I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
from EPITAPHS OF THE WAR 1914-18
Rudyard Kipling
#91. A man who writes a story is forced to put into it the best of his knowledge and the best of his feeling. The discipline of the written word punishes stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you.
John Steinbeck
#92. She who is more ashamed of dishonesty than of poverty will not be easily overcome.
Samuel Richardson
#93. In a world where everyone is behaving honestly, any dishonesty constitutes a big infraction. But, in a world where many people are behaving dishonestly, and the news is filled with stories of their infractions, even big infractions can feel small to the perpetrator.
Dan Ariely
#94. Relationships based on dishonesty, lies,
Secrets and cheats R not only predicted
to fail but also a waste of precious time
and energie! U can't fool yourself 4ever!
Lily Amis
#95. There are some things that we know are just not as pleasant as the lies that we tell ourselves, and in that sense in order to endure existence everyone endures a certain amount of dishonesty in their everyday lives.
Todd Rundgren
#96. Suspicious.- To admit a belief merely because it is a custom - but that means to be dishonest, cowardly, lazy! - And so could dishonesty, cowardice and laziness be the preconditions for morality?
Friedrich Nietzsche
#97. She descended the steps two at a time, pushed away the gloom and counted the cracks in the cobbled road, trying to block out the cold and the stench of dishonesty bred in men.
Sharon Robards
#98. Fancy language, like poplin, too often conceals an eczema.
Albert Camus
#99. The deception of others is almost always rooted in the deception of ourselves.
Bill W.
#100. I'm never going to take the view that I should say whatever I need to say in order to achieve something. Because that implies a level of dishonesty.
Ken Livingstone
