honesty Quotes

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

I always tell people that religious institutions and political institutions should be separate. So while I'm telling people this, I myself continue with them combined. Hypocrisy!

A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity.

There is no disguise which can hide love for long where it exists, or simulate it where it does not.

Few people have the wisdom to prefer the criticism that would do them good, to the praise that deceives them.

What men have called friendship is only a social arrangement, a mutual adjustment of interests, an interchange of services given and received; it is, in sum, simply a business from which those involved propose to derive a steady profit for their own self-love.

Flattery is a kind of bad money, to which our vanity gives us currency.

Though men are apt to flatter and exalt themselves with their great achievements, yet these are, in truth, very often owing not so much to design as chance.

Some counterfeits reproduce so very well the truth that it would be a flaw of judgment not to be deceived by them.

We only acknowledge small faults in order to make it appear that we are free from great ones.