- Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom. ~Thomas Jefferson
- Honesty doesn’t always pay, but dishonesty always costs. ~Michael Josephson
- Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man. – Richard Whately
- Alternative facts are not facts, they’re falsehoods. ~Chuck Todd, 2017 January 22nd, to Kellyanne Conway, Meet the Press (NBC
- O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive! Sir Walter Scott
- Building trust is like building a tower, stone by stone. But no matter how high or strong the tower seems, if you remove a stone from the bottom the tower will collapse. Lying destroys the foundation needed for trust. Michael Josephson
- An honest man’s the noblest work of God. – Robert Burns
- Lies breed more lies. Each lie requires bodyguard of other lies to prevent discovery. – Michael Josephson
- A reputation for good judgment, for fair dealing, for truth, and for rectitude, is itself a fortune. Henry Ward Beecher (1813 – 1887)
- A truth that’s told with bad intent/ Beats all the lies you can invent. ~William Blake
- Honesty is the fastest way to prevent a mistake from turning into a failure. James Altucher
- A lie has speed, but truth has endurance. ~Edgar J. Mohn
- That a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright truth, / But a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight. Alfred Tennyson
- Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories. Amílcar Cabral (1921 – 1973) Guinean revolutionary leader and freedom fighter. Party directive
- With lies you will go far, but not back again. – Yiddish proverb.
- Never forget, someone who will lie in front of you will lie to you. – Michael Josephson
- He who does not bellow the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers. Charles Pierre Péguy (1873 – 1914) French writer
- How many lies can someone tell you before distrust sets in? How many lies can you tell before you are a liar? Once someone has lied to us we look back on past conversations and ask: “What else has he lied to me about?” – Michael Josephson
- Beware of the half truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half. ~Author Unknown
- A half truth is a whole lie. ~Yiddish Proverb
- It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place. ~Henry Louis Mencken,
- A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to put its pants on. ~Winston Churchill
- Honesty pays, but it don’t seem to pay enough to suit some people. ~Frank McKinney “Kin” Hubbard
- The cruelest lies are often told in silence. ~Adlai Stevenson
- No legacy is so rich as honesty. – William Shakespeare
- Once you start telling lies, all your truths become questionable.
- Worse than telling a lie is spending the rest of your life staying true to a lie. ~Robert Brault
- Respect is earned. Honesty is appreciated. Trust is gained. Loyalty is returned. – Unknown
- Reputation, trust and credibility are assets no organization can afford to lose and the surest way to lose them is to lie. – Michael Josephson
- People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty. ~Richard J. Needham
- Lying often gives us short-term advantages and lies that remain undiscovered (as most do) may provide short-term benefits. But there is no security in secrecy or concealment. Every undiscovered lie, even seemingly small ones, are landmine capable of destroying trust.
- Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.” – STEPHEN R. COVEY
- I am different from Washington; I have a higher, grander standard of principle. Washington could not lie. I can lie, but I won’t. ~Mark Twain
- We can rationalize, justify or try to minimize our lies to ease our own conscience, but usually such defensive behavior adds insult to injury and deepens distrust. – Michael Josephson
- You can’t lie to liars without becoming a liar. We can’t cheat a cheater without becoming a cheater. Fighting fire with fire doesn’t protect trust it merely leaves you with the ashes of your integrity. – Michael Josephson
- Liars can soften resentment with apologies and promise to never lie again, but remorse alone won’t heal the wound or obliterate the scar caused by a lie. – Michael Josephson
- At its root, lying is intentional dishonesty, deliberately trying to make a person believe something that is not true. Many lies are false statements but half-truths, distortions, concealment, insincerity, exaggerations and baseless assertions intended to deceive or mislead are also lies equally damaging to trust. – Michael Josephson
- Lying to avoid problems is like getting drunk to forget them. It’s a temporary solution with the worst sort of hangover. Your problems are still there, but they are even bigger because now you can’t be trusted. – Michael Josephson
- The truth is more important than the facts. ~Frank Lloyd Wright
- Honesty is the cornerstone of all success, without which confidence and ability to perform shall cease to exist. Mary Kay Ash
- The truth is the only thing worth having, and, in a civilized life, like ours, where so many risks are removed, facing it is almost the only courageous thing left to do. ~E.V. Lucas
- Never hesitate to say what ought to be said, even if the price of doing so is losing one’s reputation. That is the true spirit of Christ. What if your hearers do not like it? That is their affair. Does the doctor worry about the particular taste of the patient when he wishes to cure him? What if the medicine be bitter, provided it cures? António Vieira (1608 – 1697) Portuguese Jesuit missionary, human rights activist, and writer.
- Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful. Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784)
- There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli (1804 – 1881) British prime minister
- Much truth is spoken, that more may be concealed. Charles John Darling (1849 – 1936) British judge
- I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.- George Bernard Shaw
- To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man pick’d out of ten thousand. William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
- If you tell the truth you don’t have to remember anything. ~Mark Twain, 1894
- No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar. ~Abraham Lincoln
- Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world. ~Thomas Carlyle
- Every lie is two lies — the lie we tell others and the lie we tell ourselves to justify it. ~Robert Brault
- Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind. ~Austin O’Malley
- The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold. ~Aristotle
- The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted. ~Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
- Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie: A fault, which needs it most, grows two thereby. ~George Herbert
- When you stretch the truth, watch out for the snapback. ~Bill Copeland
- Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. ~Mark Twain
- We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger. ~Tad Williams
- Truth fears no questions. ~Unknown
- If you want to ruin the truth, stretch it. ~Author Unknown
- Even lies we justify by our good intentions, the one’s we call “white lies” can blow up in our face when discovered. The lie often looks very different from the perspective of the person lied to than the person telling the lie. How many of us would give permission to people we know to “lie to me whenever you think it is for my own good”? – Michael Josephson
- Ha, ha! what a fool Honesty is! and Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple gentleman! ~William Shakespeare, Winter’s Tale [IV, 4, Autolycus]
- Like all valuable commodities, truth is often counterfeited. ~James Cardinal Gibbons
- If falsehood, like truth, had but one face, we would be more on equal terms. For we would consider the contrary of what the liar said to be certain. But the opposite of truth has a hundred thousand faces and an infinite field. ~Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
- There is always a way to be honest without being brutal. ~Arthur Dobrin
- It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When a man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime. ~Thomas Paine
- When truth is divided, errors multiply. ~Eli Siegel
- Cherish the friend who tells you a harsh truth, wanting ten times more to tell you a loving lie. ~Robert Brault
- It is not difficult to deceive the first time, for the deceived possesses no antibodies; unvaccinated by suspicion, she overlooks lateness, accepts absurd excuses, permits the flimsiest patching to repair great rents in the quotidian. ~John Updike
- Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer’s mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself. ~Arthur Schopenhauer, translated from German
- Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so. ~Mark Twain
- Speak the truth, but leave immediately after. ~Slovenian Proverb
- The highest compact we can make with our fellow is — “Let there be truth between us two forevermore.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth. ~Mark Twain, Following the Equator
- Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. ~Robert Brault
- The truth needs so little rehearsal. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
- Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships. ~Author Unknown
- One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives. ~Mark Twain
- In the end, you make your reputation and you have your success based upon credibility Brit Hume
- Leadership is learned, earned, and discerned. You develop it. It’s based on trust and credibility. Others see it in you. You can’t demand it. Rick Warren
- Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it… ~Jonathan Swift
- Falsehood will fly, as it were, on the wings of the wind, and carry its tales to every corner of the earth; whilst truth lags behind; her steps, though sure, are slow and solemn, and she has neither vigour nor activity enough to pursue and overtake her enemy… ~Thomas Francklin, 1787
- Here are the values that I stand for: honesty, equality, kindness, compassion, treating people the way you want to be treated and helping those in need. To me, those are traditional values. Ellen DeGeneres
- The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty. Zig Ziglar
- We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square. Michelle Obama
- Goodness is about character – integrity, honesty, kindness, generosity, moral courage, and the like. More than anything else, it is about how we treat other people. Dennis Prager
- Honesty is something you can’t wear out. Waylon Jennings
- It is inaccurate to say that I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for public office.
- It is discouraging how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit. Noel Coward
- Honesty is the highest form of intimacy. – unknown
- Honesty is an expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people.
- I’m sorry if you don’t like my honesty, but to be fair I don’t like your lies.
TRUST
- The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him and show your distrust. ~Henry L. Stimson
- Earn trust, earn trust, earn trust. Then you can worry about the rest.” – SETH GODIN
- For every good reason there is to lie, there is a better reason to tell the truth.” – BO BENNETT
- “A man who trusts nobody is apt to be the kind of man nobody trusts.” – HAROLD MACMILLAN
- Trust starts with trustworthy leadership. It must be built into the corporate culture.” – BARBARA BROOKS KIMMEL
- The ability to establish, grow, extend, and restore trust is the key professional and personal competency of our time.” – STEPHEN M.R. COVEY
- Trust is the highest form of human motivation. It brings out the very best in people.” – STEPHEN R. COVEY
- A little girl and her father were crossing a bridge. The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter: “Sweetheart, please hold my hand so that you don’t fall into the river.” The little girl said: “No, Dad. You hold my hand.” “What’s the difference?” Asked the puzzled father. “There’s a big difference,” replied the little girl. “If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. But if you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens, you will never let my hand go.” In any relationship, the essence of trust is not in its bind, but in its bond. So hold the hand of the person whom you love rather than expecting them to hold yours.
- *Trust is fragile. It is as easily destroyed by suspicion as by proof.- Michael Josephson
- *Our distrust is very expensive. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
- Trust is a tremendous asset and distrust an enormous liability yet time and time again our corporate and political leaders forfeit their claim to trust and the benefits of credibility by dishonest or misleading statements or by doing things in secret that, if found out, will be considered a betrayal by those who trusted them. – Michael Josephson
- You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment unless you trust enough. ~Frank Crane
- You can as easily love without trusting as you can hug without embracing. ~Robert Brault
- There comes a point in a relationship when you realize that you trust someone enough to let them keep their secrets. ~Robert Brault
- Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree, because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch, or you might simply get covered in sap, and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors, where it is harder to get a splinter. ~Lemony Snicket
- Few delights can equal the mere presence of one whom we trust utterly. ~George MacDonald
- Few things help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him. ~Booker T. Washington
- You cannot stop trusting people in life but I have learned to be a little bit careful. The way to make people trust-worthy is to trust them. ~Ernest Hemingway
- The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” Elton John?
- Accuracy builds credibility. Jim Rohn
- Reject all that is fake – fake friends, fake emotions, fake ambitions. Reject pretenses, deceptions and every other form of dishonesty. Insist on and give nothing less than truth, sincerity and candor. — Michael Josephson
- Honesty builds trust. Lying destroys it. When you lie to someone, even once, trust is replaced by suspicion and suspicion destroys trust
- To be trusted, one has to be trustworthy. Trustworthiness, however, is a more complex concept than most people realize. It embodies four separate virtues: integrity, honesty, promise-keeping and loyalty. A failure in any one of these areas will prevent or destroy trust. Integrity refers to moral wholeness, a consistency between words, acts and beliefs. People with integrity earn our trust because they can be counted on to put ethical principles over integrity and do what they believe is right and what they say they will do even when it may cost more than they want to pay. People of integrity put their honor above social, financial and career considerations. People earn our trust by being scrupulously honest, by being truthful and sincere. Honest people don’t lie or intentionally deceive or mislead with clever half-truths, verbal hair-splitting or calculated silence designed to cause us to believe something that is not true. Trustworthy people also keep their promises and, in relationships justifying expectations of loyalty, they demonstrate their commitment to our well-being by being forthright and candid. This can be tricky when a person has conflicting loyalties, but close friendships and many business relationships create an expectation that our friend or business associate will affirmatively volunteer information we need or want to know to protect ourselves (e.g., about the infidelity of a spouse or an impending merger or plant closing). Trust isn’t attained by wishing and wanting. We build trust like we build a tower, stone by stone. What we often forget is that these towers, no matter how old or how tall, can be easily toppled. Lies, deceptions and broken promises don’t remove stones from the top of the tower they imperil the foundation by taking them from the bottom.
- Rules About Trust. I’ve talked about it lots of times before: The high cost of lying and deception — by politicians and police, corporate executives and clergy, even journalists, accountants and educators — has been to weaken every major social institution. As each of these institutions wages its separate battle to remove the cloud of suspicion and cynicism that hovers over it, there are certain truths about trust that must be understood and dealt with. First, there is no shortcut to building trust. In fact, rebuilding trust on the rubble of lost credibility is much harder. The antidote is nothing less than scrupulous and consistent honesty — especially when the truth is costly. Second, where trust is important, there are no little lies. In some ways lies, however small they seem, are like germs. Without the antibody of trust they cause infections that can kill credibility. Third, the lethal quality of lies lasts long after the lie is told. And even lies told years ago have an immediate poisonous effect on trust when they are discovered. Think of all the prominent people who have been undone by the discovery of falsehoods on old resumes. Fourth, while honesty and forthrightness don’t always seem to pay, dishonesty and concealment always cost. It’s true that in some settings nothing good may come of admitting wrongdoing, but it gets a lot worse when you don’t. Fifth, lies breed other lies. It’s harder to tell just one lie than to have just one potato chip. Once you start lying, it takes an ever-growing bodyguard of new lies to protect the old ones. Finally, don’t be seduced by the “fight fire with fire” excuse or all you’ll end up with is the ashes of your integrity. Self-justifications aside, you can’t lie to a liar or cheat a cheater without becoming a liar and cheater.
- A teenager wants to go to a party, but she’s sure her mom won’t let her. So she and her friend concoct a false cover story. What’s the big deal? Most kids lie to their parents from time to time, and their parents probably lied to their parents. Despite rhetoric about virtue being its own reward, a great many adults – and a higher proportion of kids – are more likely to make their choices based on a calculation of risks and benefits than moral principles. Since young people are particularly susceptible to choices that indulge impulses and favor immediate needs and wants, we need to teach them how making bad choices to gratify such desires can sabotage their most important relationships and impede critical life objectives. Every dishonest act has at least two potential consequences: 1) the actual penalty, and 2) loss of trust. The second is by far the more serious and underestimated. This is especially true in parent-child relationships. Where trust is important, there are no little lies. When parents don’t believe their children, their cords of control will be tighter and held longer. The price of lying is lost freedom. It’s often difficult to predict how a decision today will affect tomorrow, but dishonesty often has a lasting negative impact on relationships and reputations as well as self-image and character. From both a moral and practical perspective, honesty is the best policy.
- Today, I want to talk about the qualities that generate trust. I’m talking about being trustworthy, not trusting others. There’s a relationship between the two concepts, but a decision to trust another is a choice, not a moral obligation. Being trustworthy, however, is an indispensable aspect of good character. Thus, we should always act so as to be worthy of trust – not because it’s wise to do so but because it’s the right way to live. Being worthy of trust entails two qualities: character and competence. Of course, the attribute we first associate with trustworthy behavior is integrity. This crucial aspect of good character is demonstrated through scrupulous honesty and moral courage. If we want people to trust us or our organization, they must believe we will consistently do the right thing regardless of circumstances or pressures. Other aspects of character include accountability and fairness. People trust those who accept responsibility for their choices and don’t palm off blame to others. It’s also important to be regarded as fundamentally fair. But in business, confidence in character is not enough to justify trust. In this case, trust also involves the conviction that the person or organization will successfully do what is expected. This competency dimension embraces faith in ability, knowledge, and judgment as well as a belief that the person or organization will be reliable and responsive. Reliability is established through diligence and follow-through while responsiveness involves respectful communication and demonstrated concern.
- 1.Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, even if it’s not what others want to hear. 2. When you make a mistake, admit it and make amends. 3. Say what you mean and do what you say, even when its costly or inconvenient. 4. Put honor above gain. -Michael Josephson
Honesty may not always pay, but lying always costs.
Reputation, trust and credibility are assets no organization can afford to lose and the surest way to lose them is to lie.
Building trust is like building a tower, stone by stone. But no matter how high or strong the tower seems, if you remove a stone from the bottom the tower will collapse. That’s what lying does — it removes the foundation stone of trust.
Lying often gives us short-term advantages and lies that remain undiscovered (as most do) may provide short-term benefits. But there is no security in secrecy or concealment. Every undiscovered lie, even a seemingly small one, is a landmine capable of destroying trust.
Lies breed more lies to cover-up. Winston Churchill spoke about each lie needing a bodyguard of lies to protect itself. Even lies we justify by our good intentions — the ones we call “white lies” — can blow up in our face when discovered. The lie often looks very different from the perspective of the person lied to than the person telling the lie. How many of us would give permission to people we know to “lie to me whenever you think it is for my own good”?
We can rationalize, justify or try to minimize our lies to ease our own conscience but usually such defensive behavior adds insult to injury and deepens distrust. How many lies can you tell before you are a liar? How many lies can someone tell you before distrust sets in? Once we discover that someone has lied to us we look back on past conversations and ask: “What else has he lied to me about?” Can you lie to a liar and not become a liar?
We can apologize, ask for forgiveness and promise to never lie again, but we usually can’t obliterate the scar or even fully heal the wound caused by our lie.
We also can’t try to disguise our lies in half-truths or concealment. While we might use other terms like deception, distortion, misrepresentation, insincerity or a lack of candor the terminology isn’t important. At its root, lying is intentional dishonesty, deliberately trying to make a person believe something that is not true. It’s not only dishonest though, it’s disrespectful.
It’s also a very bad strategy. Lying to avoid problems is like getting drunk to forget them. It’s a temporary solution with the worst sort of hangover. Your problems are still there, but they are even bigger because now you can’t be trusted.–Michael Josephson
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
12 TRUTHS ABOUT LYING.
- Honesty may not always pay, but lying always costs.
- Trust is a tower, built stone by stone, lies take stones from the bottom.
- There is no security in secrecy; every undiscovered lie is a live landmine.
- Lies breed a bodyguard of new lies to protect themselves.
- Lies look very different to the person lied to than the person telling the lie.
- Rationalizing, justifying or trying to minimize a lie only deepens distrust.
- When we are lied to we wonder: “What else have you lied to me about?”
- It only takes one lie to make you a liar or distrust someone who lied to you.
- Apologies for lying help but they can’t remove the scar or heal the wound.
- You can’t disguise lies in half-truths or silence; a lie is a lie.
- Lying is not only dishonest; it’s disrespectful.
- When you lie to a liar your still a liar. Michael Josephson