Top 40 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: Quotes About Trust, Truth Quotes

2. “Honesty is always the best policy.”

— George Washington

3. “If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

— Virginia Woolf

4. “Honesty and integrity are by far the most important assets of an entrepreneur.”

— Zig Ziglar

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes

5. “You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.”

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Also featured in: Respect Quotes, Loyalty Quotes

6. “Just be honest with yourself. That opens the door.”

— Vernon Howard

Also featured in: Truth Quotes

7. “A man without ethics is a wild beast loosed upon this world.”

— Albert Camus

8. “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. It’s the hard that makes it great.”

— Tom Hanks

Also featured in: Quotes About Work

9. “The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.”

— Zig Ziglar

Also featured in: Loyalty Quotes

10. “I’m not a handsome guy, but I can give my hand to someone who needs help. Beauty is in the heart, not in the face.”

— Abdul Kalam

11. “Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don't expect it from cheap people.”

— Warren Buffett

12. “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

Also featured in: Faith Quotes, Quotes About Hope

13. “Love is forgiving and Love is for giving.”

— Wayne W. Dyer

14. “Honesty and openness is always the foundation of insightful dialogue.”

— Bell Hooks

15. “Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

16. “Honesty is the recognition of the fact that the unreal is unreal and can have no value, that neither love nor fame nor cash is a value if obtained by fraud.”

— Ayn Rand

17. “Character is far more important than intellect in making a man a good citizen or successful at his calling- meaning by character not only such qualities as honesty and truthfulness, but courage, perseverance and self-reliance.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Also featured in: Character Quotes

18. “The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.”

— Ernest Hemingway

19. “If you keep hiding your true self, your life becomes like slow death. Once you become free from the lies and the hiding of yourself, then life becomes vibrant again.”

— Ziggy Marley

20. “I think honesty is the most heroic quality one can aspire to.”

— Daniel Radcliffe

Also featured in: Quality Quotes

21. “When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

— Audre Lorde

Also featured in: Silence Quotes

22. “Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.”

— Aristotle

23. “And we need to share our story. Not with everyone but with someone. There is someone who is like you were. And he or she needs to know what God can do. Your honest portrayal of your past may be the courage for another’s future.”

— Max Lucado

24. “Honesty and integrity are absolutely essential for success in life – all areas of life. The really good news is that anyone can develop both honesty and integrity.”

— Zig Ziglar

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes

25. “Have the courage to say no. Have the courage to face the truth. Do the right thing because it is right. These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity.”

— W. Clement Stone

26. “Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”

— Thomas A. Edison

27. “And that’s the thing about people who mean everything they say. They think everyone else does too.”

— Khaled Hosseini

28. “There is no foundation like the rock of honesty and fairness, and when you begin to build your life on that rock, with the cement of the faith in God that you have, then you have a real start.”

— Ronald Reagan

Also featured in: Real Quotes

29. “Time does not change us. It just unfolds us.”

— Max Frisch

30. “No matter how plain a woman may be, if truth and honesty are written across her face, she will be beautiful.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Also featured in: Truth Quotes, Beautiful Quotes

31. “When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.”

— Ayn Rand

Also featured in: Sacrifice Quotes

32. “A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.”

— Ernest Hemingway

33. “A promise made is a debt unpaid.”

— Robert W. Service

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

34. “Integrity has no need of rules.”

— Albert Camus

35. “The love is real in any situation; everything else is just an illusion.”

— Marianne Williamson

Also featured in: Real Quotes

36. “The most boring thing in the entire world is nudity. The second most boring thing is honesty.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

37. “All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

38. “Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.”

— James Anthony Froude

Also featured in: Quotes About Veganism, Sports Quotes

39. “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

40. “A good conscience is a continual Christmas.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Christmas Quotes