Being Dishonest Quotes & Sayings

As I stood in front of the mirror in the beautiful little black dress, I knew that I was looking at a woman whom I would never see again. I wished I had never seen her in the first place, but the truth is she had always been there. I was being dishonest to myself by pretending that she hadn't. — Jane L Rosen

It's a bore, but the answer is good things only happen to you if you're good. Good? Honest is more what I mean. Not lawtype honest
I'd rob a grave, I'd steal two-bits off a dead man's eyes if I thought it would contribute to the day's enjoyment
but unto-thyself-type honest. Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. Cancer may cool you, but the other's sure to. — Truman Capote

The only reason integrity should be a burden to you is if you enjoy being dishonest. — Sam Storms

Is there a problem, Ms. Parker? Something you want to say to me?" Reaching for his tie, he began to loosen it, unraveling it with his fingers, angry eyes still locked on mine.
"I'm not sure I like being your pet. Or science project, I don't know which."
"You have a smart mouth."
"You make smart observances."
"You're going to make this invitation difficult, aren't you?"
"If you're dishonest with me, yes."
"You'll regret it if you don't accept."
"Is that a threat?"
"That's a promise. — Rachael Wade

I am just and honest, not because I expect to live in another world, but because, having felt the pain of injustice and dishonesty towards myself, I have a fellow-felling with other men, who would suffer the same pain if I were unjust or dishonest towards them. It is a pang to me to witness the suffering of a fellow-being, and I feel his suffering the more acutely because he is mortal - because his life is so short, and I would have it, is possible, filled with happiness and not misery — George Eliot

Learn to trust and be trustworthy. When you treat someone as if they are being dishonest, you will train them to be. It's more powerful to treat someone as if they are being honest, and you will train them to now be honest, even if they weren't then. — Marshall Sylver

If there is no honesty, there is no relationship. The only degree to which there is a relationship is the degree to which you are honest. Expressing your clear desires does not make you a dictator and you telling what you think, feel, and what you want or don't want, is just called being honest. It doesn't control him at all.
You're trying to control others by withholding information by not getting involved and by not being honest. Withholding information is a form of manipulation. It is dishonest and it's destructive to a relationship. — Stefan Molyneux

Mr.Blank's reputation as a card shark had preceded him. No one accused him of being dishonest, but on the other hand no one accused him of being honest. — Groucho Marx

You're either on team Republican or team Democrat, and it's the idea that one of these sides has a perfect record of being correct and is worth supporting on 100% of the causes. I find that kind of thinking extremely dangerous and very intellectually dishonest. — Jonathan Hickman

Choosing between dull and dishonest is like being asked whether you want to be shot or stabbed. "What — Emma Chase

Being idolized and being torn down felt oddly similar. They both made me feel alone.
Friendship and trust should be earned, and when you're famous, people seem to want to give them to you whether you've earned them or not, and it felt dishonest to me. Fame was not real. It was all a projection - fame made me a blank canvas that people projected their love, lust, troubles, self-worth, and desire upon.
Fame and power do not change us, they amplify us. — Jewel

The life I chose when I promised my six-year-old self never to forget being a child, never to grow frightened and dishonest like the grownups I saw, nodding politely to each other without affection, and decided to put my true self in a time capsule for later use. — Aurora Levins Morales

Is this what nice is? Letting people think things that aren't true just to avoid hurting their feelings? Being nice is dishonest. — Amy Reed

Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight — Barney Frank

Anecdote: In a controversial way, Comedian and actor Bill Cosby sought to teach his son the pain of being lied to. Convinced his son had been dishonest regarding an issue, Cosby promised that if he told him the truth, he would not hit him. When his son did confess, Cosby did hit him. Seeing his son's shock and hurt, Cosby said he hoped this lesson had deepened his understanding of the anguish generated by a sense betrayal. — Bill Cosby

Our world is very dishonest, and our leaders encourage dishonesty by setting bad examples - by lying, being corrupt, and using political sleight of hand to sustain power. — Stuart Wilde

I think you can tell when someone is being dishonest as an actor. — Kat Dennings

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest. She wasn't able to endure being at a disadvantage and, given this unwillingness, I suppose she had begun dealing in subterfuges when she was very young in order to keep that cool, insolent smile turned to the world and yet satisfy the demands of her hard, jaunty body. — F Scott Fitzgerald

She wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson ... " "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway - a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe - all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it. — Truman Capote

After you die, you're going to hell for being a dishonest bastard, and you'll burn for eternity."
The guy snatched his hand back. "I don't believe in Hell."
"Most people don't until they get there." Mab smiled at him. "Of course, if you stop lying and cheating, you can probably redeem yourself. If not, have them put marshmallows in your coffin. There's a bight side to everything, I always say. — Jennifer Crusie

The power of kings is transitory, like everything else. Royal glory is difficult to climb, like a bamboo; it is hard to hold, being fidgety like a monkey on a treetop; it is balanced precariously, like drops of water on a lotus-leaf; it is changeable, like the path of the wind; it is undependable, like the friendship of a dishonest man; it is difficult to tame, like a serpent; it glistens only for a moment, like a cloud at sunset; it is fragile, like bubbles on the surface of a river; it is elusive, like the treasure attained in a dream. Remember all this, and enjoy your kingdom modestly. — V.S. Narvane

I'd rather be honest and lose than be dishonest and win — Greg McKeown

People think you're being dishonest because you're just too blunt. — Holland Roden

score? A dishonest or callous action? Being fired from a job? Being rejected? Focus on that thing. Feel all the emotions that go with it. Now put it in a growth-mindset perspective. Look honestly at your role in it, but understand that it doesn't define your intelligence or personality. Instead, ask: What did I (or can I ) learn from that experience? How can I use it as a basis for growth? Carry that with you instead. — Carol S. Dweck

As regards pacifism, the belief that it is always wrong to kill a human being, again, anyone is free to hold this position, as immoral as it may be. And what other word than "immoral" can one use to describe forbidding the killing of someone who is in the process of murdering innocent men, women, and children, in, let's say, a movie theater or a school? But it is dishonest to cite the commandment against murder to justify pacifism. There is moral killing - most obviously when done in self-defense against an aggressor - and there is immoral killing. And the word for that is murder. — Dennis Prager

There was a time in my life when being dishonest with women was the natural way to be. I finally said, "Hey, I have to stop this silliness." — Al Pacino

In a world that is being darkened by evil images and dishonest messages, you have been blessed to recognize more easily the flashes of light and truth. You have learned for yourself that light grows brighter as you receive it gladly. It will become brighter and brighter until the perfect day when we will be in the presence of the Source of the light. — Henry B. Eyring

Searching through Monster while on the clock feels like being on Tinder while still married. — Crystal Woods

I swear that while I live I will do what little I can to preserve and to augment the liberties of man, woman, and child.
It is a question of justice, of mercy, of honesty, of intellectual development. If there is a man in the world who is not willing to give to every human being every right he claims for himself, he is just so much nearer a barbarian than I am. It is a question of honesty. The man who is not willing to give to every other the same intellectual rights he claims for himself, is dishonest, selfish, and brutal. — Robert G. Ingersoll

I believe we are being dishonest with language minority groups if we tell them they can take full part in American life without learning the English language. — S.I. Hayakawa

Being dishonest to himself is the biggest crime any human can make — Loknath

Two days later, January 28, they had Coach Bryant's funeral. I'd be totally dishonest if I didn't say I was disappointed that the coaches who hadn't been retained weren't included on the manifest to ride the team buses to Birmingham for his burial. I know that the other coaches felt like I did. We had been there with Coach Bryant until the end and we should have been offered the dignity of being there for his final interment, but that was not the case. — Mal Moore With Steve Townsend

In her business, there were many who laughed at honest men, calling them easy pickings. That was a fallacy. Being honest did not make one naive. A dishonest fool and an honest fool were equally easy to scam; you just went about it in different ways. However, a man who was honest and clever was always, always more difficult to scam than someone who was both dishonest and clever. — Brandon Sanderson

Friends have asked how I came to engender this American antagonism. My prodigious sin was, and still is, being a non-conformist. Although I am not a Communist I refused to fall in line by hating them. Secondly, I was opposed to the Committee on Un-American Activities - a dishonest phrase to begin with, elastic enough to wrap around the throat and strangle the voice of any American citizen whose honest opinion is a minority of one. — Charlie Chaplin

A lot of people don't believe there's evil. If there's good in this world, then you're being intellectually dishonest, if you believe there's a good power, you've also got to believe there's an evil power, too. There are physical laws that are in place. — Si Robertson

After my book Wanderlust came out in 2000, I found myself better able to resist being bullied out of my own perceptions and interpretations. On two occasions around that time, I objected to the behavior of a man, only to be told that the incidents hadn't happened at all as I said, that I was subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest- in a nutshell, female. — Rebecca Solnit

God grant to all of us the power and strength to be people of integrity, and the insight and wisdom to avoid being led into the snares of the dishonest. — Marvin J. Ashton

Be anything but a coward, a pretender, an emotional crook, a whore: I'd rather have cancer than a dishonest heart. Which isn't being pious. Just practical. — Truman Capote

Most think that they are above being supported by the town; but it oftener happens that they are not above supporting themselves by dishonest means, which would be more disreputable. — Henry David Thoreau

Why, Tess,' Billy said, with exaggerated surprise, 'aren't you just crazy about being a cheerleader?'
'Oh, I love it,' she responded derisively. 'All this rah-rah stuff is for infants. I'm sick of it.' I could hardly believe my ears. How could anyone get sick of being part of the most prestigious group of females in the school? I mean, in my own thoughts, I could make fun of cheerleading as a mindless activity, but I couldn't sneer at the popularity and adoration the cheerleaders received as their due. I couldn't be that dishonest with myself. — Barbara Cohen

I forked some of my enchiladas in my mouth, only to discover they weren't enchiladas. They were liver and onions that had been mislabeled. I spat it back onto the plate. Dr. Marquez pointed triumphantly. "Ah! See what you just did? You told me a lie, and your own body reacted violently against it. In being dishonest with me, you almost made yourself throw up." "No, I almost threw up because this food sucks," I countered. "It's liver and onions. I didn't like liver and onions back on earth. No one does. So what NASA moron thought it would be a good idea to dehydrate it? — Stuart Gibbs

There are men so incorrigibly lazy that no inducement that you can offer will tempt them to work; so eaten up by vice that virtue is abhorrent to them, and so inveterately dishonest that theft is to them a master passion. When a human being has reached that stage, there is only one course that can be rationally pursued. Sorrowfully, but remorselessly, it must be recognized that he has become lunatic, morally demented, incapable of self-government, and that upon him, therefore, must be passed the sentence of permanent seclusion from a world in which he is not fit to be at large. — William Booth

The world. You're cut out for failure, and you know it. Though you're capable of being a son-of-a-bitch, you're not quite ruthless enough to be so consistently. Though you're not precisely the most honest man I've ever known, neither are you heroically dishonest. On the one hand, you're capable of work, but you're just lazy enough so that you can't work as hard as the world would want you to. On the other hand, you're not quite so lazy that you can impress upon the world a sense of your importance. And you're not lucky - not really. No aura rises from you, and you wear a puzzled expression. — John Edward Williams

In the long run, I believe that honesty is definitely the best policy. One can get away by being dishonest for a short term, but ultimately, honesty is what pays. — Kapil Dev

Well,' said Staines, frowning slightly, 'that's very difficult to say - which to value higher. Honesty or loyalty. From a certain point of view one might say that honesty is a kind of loyalty - loyalty to the truth ... though one would hardly call loyalty a kind of honesty! I suppose that when it came down to it - if I had to choose between being dishonest but loyal, or being disloyal but honest - I'd rather stand by my men, or by my country, or by my family, than by truth. So I suppose I'd say loyalty ... I myself. But in others ... in the case of others, I feel quite differently. I'd much prefer an honest friend to a friend who was merely loyal to me; and I'd much rather be loyal to an honest friend than to a sycophant. Let's say that my answer is conditional; in myself, I value loyalty; on others, honesty — Eleanor Catton

And like most people who have spent much of their adult life being emotionally dishonest, I overcalculated the sympathy a final being honest would bring — John Fowles

Don't ever accuse anyone of being full of pride, undignified and unprofessional when simply they are wise to move away from dishonest schemers.
Dishonesty comprise too of layers of lies simply casted for impressive appearances. There are times too that corrupt hearts have their own confused, modified, self-affirming, pro-self interest business inclined definitions of professionalism, integrity, dignity and pride. — Angelica Hopes

Lions should be strong but sweet beasts in a Disney cartoon. But they aren't, so when they act like lions you're angry at them for not being the fantasy animals you imagined. Russian bears don't put on top hats and ride unicycles. Or sleep in bed next to Goldilocks. People force them to do those stupid things in circuses and films and children's books. Sure, some will be more docile or more ferocious than others, but in the end they will always, always be bears. And you should never turn your back on them. You should never even get near them; it's that simple. They're not being dishonest - you are in your perception of them. — Jonathan Carroll

Diego considered while he stroked the thick ruff of fur around Finn's neck. "Fiction isn't lying. Everyone knows it's imaginary. It's not as if the writer's being dishonest and misleading the reader."

"Though it's still not true."

"Well...no, it's not."

"Honest lying." Finn laid his head on Diego's thigh. "I like that. — Angel Martinez