Top 100 Honesty Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.”

— Albert Einstein

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Quotes About Trust

2. “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Quotes About Trust, Liars Quotes

3. “No legacy is so rich as honesty.”

— William Shakespeare

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Values Quotes, Positive Short Quotes, Virtue Quotes

4. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Also featured in: Fiction Quotes, Quotes About Writing, Truth Quotes, Short Deep Quotes

5. “I'd rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”

— Kurt Cobain

Also featured in: Self-Esteem Quotes, Emotional Quotes, Be Yourself Quotes, Character Quotes

6. “Tear off the mask. Your face is glorious.”

— Rumi

Also featured in: Self-Love Quotes, Motivational Monday Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Truth Quotes

7. “Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Also featured in: Human Nature Quotes, Reflection Quotes, Existentialism Quotes, Truth Quotes

8. “The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think.”

— Aristotle

Also featured in: Knowledge Quotes, Truth Quotes

9. “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. People know themselves much better than you do. That’s why it’s important to stop expecting them to be something other than who they are.”

— Maya Angelou

Also featured in: Personality Quotes, Quotes About Believing, Being Yourself Quotes

10. “Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth.”

— Socrates

Also featured in: Short Quotes, Truth Quotes

11. “True words are not fancy. Fancy words are not true. The good do not debate. Debaters are not good.”

— Lao Tzu

Also featured in: Morality Quotes, Truth Quotes, Virtue Quotes, Taoism Quotes

12. “Write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.”

— Neil Gaiman

Also featured in: Quotes About Writing, Storytelling Quotes, Artist Quotes, Creative Quotes

13. “Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It’s about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.”

— Brené Brown

Also featured in: Personality Quotes, Truth Quotes, Being Yourself Quotes, Quotes About People

14. “When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

— Thomas Sowell

15. “The gift of truth excels all other gifts.”

— Buddha

Also featured in: Values Quotes, Knowledge Quotes, Buddhist Quotes, Truth Quotes

16. “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”

— Charles H. Spurgeon

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Travel Quotes, Quotes About Trust

17. “No one was ever injured by the truth; but he who persists in self-deception and ignorance is injured.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Deep Quotes, Knowledge Quotes, Philosophy Quotes

18. “Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.”

— Alan Watts

Also featured in: Deep Quotes, Love You Quotes, Quotes About Feelings

19. “When you have something to say, silence is a lie – and tyranny feeds on lies.”

— Jordan B. Peterson

20. “Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”

— Khaled Hosseini

21. “Can I say something? Um, I’m the type of person that if you ask me a question and I don’t know the answer, I’m gonna tell you that I don’t know. But I bet you what, I know how to find the answer and I will find the answer.”

— Will Smith

Also featured in: Knowledge Quotes

22. “Lies run sprints, but the truth runs marathons.”

— Michael Jackson

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Clever Quotes, Liars Quotes

23. “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

— Winston Churchill

Also featured in: Knowledge Quotes, Truth Quotes, Powerful Quotes

24. “Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.”

— Maggie Kuhn

Also featured in: Overcoming Fear Quotes, Being Strong Quotes, Adversity Quotes

25. “How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg? Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.”

— Abraham Lincoln

Also featured in: Witty Quotes, Mistake Quotes

26. “Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

Also featured in: Quotes About Reality

27. “Trust happens when leaders are transparent.”

— Jack Welch

Also featured in: Quotes About Trust

28. “There’s just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.”

— Frank Ocean

29. “Truth sounds like hate to those who hate the truth.”

— Todd Wagner

30. “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.”

— Thomas Paine

Also featured in: Boldness Quotes, Truth Quotes

31. “Be honest with yourself. The world is not honest with you. The world loves hypocrisy. When you are honest with yourself you find the road to inner peace.”

— Paramahansa Yogananda

Also featured in: Self-Care Quotes, Inner Peace Quotes, Wellness Wednesday Quotes, Peace of Mind Quotes

32. “Better by far to embrace the hard truth than a reassuring fable. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.”

— Carl Sagan

Also featured in: Meaning Quotes, Science Quotes, Truth Quotes, Purpose Quotes

33. “Never apologize for what you feel. It’s like being sorry for being real.”

— Lil Wayne

Also featured in: Be Yourself Quotes, Real Quotes, You Are Amazing Quotes

34. “I’m not perfect and I don’t have to be.”

— Demi Lovato

Also featured in: Self-Worth Quotes, Acceptance Quotes, Identity Quotes, Mental Health Quotes

35. “Honesty and transparency make you vulnerable. Be honest and transparent anyway.”

— Mother Teresa

36. “The most important thing in your life is to live your life with integrity and to not give in to peer pressure to try to be something that you’re not.”

— Ellen DeGeneres

Also featured in: Inspirational Quotes for Women, Believe in Yourself Quotes, Self-Worth Quotes, Identity Quotes

37. “There’s no God higher than truth.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Also featured in: Truth Quotes

38. “I would rather stand alone in the light of truth than in the crowd filled with error.”

— Adrian Rogers

Also featured in: Boldness Quotes

39. “Honesty doesn’t always pay, but dishonesty always costs.”

— Michael Josephson

Also featured in: Liars Quotes

40. “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

41. “There is a price to pay for speaking the truth. There is a bigger price for living a lie.”

— Cornel West

42. “You cannot fix what you will not face.”

— James Baldwin

Also featured in: Accountability Quotes, Self-Improvement Quotes

43. “It is always the false that makes you suffer, the false desires and fears, the false values and ideas, the false relationships between people. Abandon the false and you are free of pain; truth makes happy, truth liberates.”

— Nisargadatta Maharaj

Also featured in: Inner Peace Quotes, Enlightenment Quotes, Suffering Quotes

44. “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies.”

— Noam Chomsky

Also featured in: Accountability Quotes, Liars Quotes

45. “Every lie is a poison; there are no harmless lies. Only the truth is safe. Only the truth gives me consolation – it is the one unbreakable diamond.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Also featured in: Truth Quotes

46. “I’m not okay.”

— Gerard Way

Also featured in: Sorrow Quotes, Depression Quotes, Loneliness Quotes, Doubt Quotes

47. “No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Also featured in: Be Yourself Quotes, Human Nature Quotes, Depression Quotes

48. “If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character.”

— Jordan B. Peterson

Also featured in: Be Yourself Quotes, Accountability Quotes, Liars Quotes

49. “If you want to be trusted, be trustworthy.”

— Stephen R. Covey

Also featured in: Reputation Quotes, Principles And Laws

50. “Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.”

— Carl Sagan

Also featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Life is Hard Quotes, Universe Quotes