Quotes on INTEGRITY
"Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way."
— Aristotle
"A liar needs a good memory."
— Quintillian
"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful."
— Samuel Johnson
Rasselas, ch. 41
"What is left when honor is lost?"
— Publilius Syrus
First Century BC, Maxim 265
"No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to."
— Seneca
Roman philosopher and writer 4 BCE - 65 CE
"So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge."
— Cicero
"We need to stress that personal integrity is as important as executive skill in business dealings....Setting an example from the top has a ripple effect throughout a business school or a corporation. After nearly three decades in business, 10 years as chief executive of a Big Eight accounting firm, I have learned that the standards set at the top filter throughout a company....[Quoting Professor Thomas Dunfee of the Wharton School:] ' A company that fails to take steps to produce a climate conducive to positive work-related ethical attitudes may create a vacuum in which employees so predisposed may foster a frontier-style, everyone for themselves mentality.' "
— Russell E. Palmer
"Don't measure your neighbor's honesty by your own."
— American Proverb
"If we believe a thing to be bad, and if we have a right to prevent it, it is our duty to try to prevent it and damn the consequences."
— Lord Milner
"Let no pleasure tempt thee, no profit allure thee, no persuasion move thee, to do anything which thou knowest to be evil; so shalt thou always live jollity; for a good conscience is a continual Christmas."
— Benjamin Franklin
"The right type of [leader] is democratic. He must not consider himself a superior sort of personage. He must actually feel democratic; it is not enough that he try to pose as democratic—he must be democratic, otherwise the veneer, the sheen, would wear off, for you can't fool a body of intelligent American workingmen for very long. He must ring true."
—Thomas Coleman Du Pont
"If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything."
— Mark Twain
"As religion and faith are being driven out of the public square, the Judeo-Christian ethical foundations that have sustained our country since its beginning, are being lost and are being replaced with a humanistic amorality, a self-centered, pragmatic indifference that will ensure that our moral compasses will fail to point us in the right direction in the future."
— Archie B. Carroll
Professor of Management, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia
"In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if they don't have the first, the other two will kill you."
— Warren Buffet
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
"To be persuasive we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible we must be truthful."
— Edward R. Murrow
"If everyone were clothed with integrity, if every heart were just, frank, kindly, the other virtues would be well-nigh useless."
— Moliere [Jean Baptiste Poquelin]
Tartuffe, V, i (1622-1673)
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
— Abraham Lincoln
"The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is by trusting him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust."
— Henry L. Stimson
Former U.S. Secretary of State
"A great man is always willing to be little."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
"It is our hypocrisy and self-focus that drains us. When we become purpose centered, internally directed other focused and externally open, we discover energy we didn’t know we had."
— Robert E. Quinn
"The man who trusts men will