Dishonest Quotes & Sayings

Yes, even I am dishonest. Not in many ways, but in some. Forty-one, I think it is. — Mark Twain

Integrity is built by defeating the temptation to be dishonest; humility grows when we refuse to be prideful; and endurance develops every time you reject the temptation to give up. — Rick Warren

A culture exists within the [Ted] Cruz camp that would allow people to take advantage of a situation like this in a very dishonest way. — Benjamin Carson

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

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

The faces stood out, separate, lonely, no two alike. Behind each, there were the years of a life lived or half over, effort, hope and an attempt, honest or dishonest, but an attempt. It had left on all a single mark in common: on lips smiling with malice, on lips loose with renunciation, on lips tight with uncertain dignity - on all - the mark of suffering. — Ayn Rand

But any acquisition that doesn't correspond to the labour expended is dishonest — Leo Tolstoy

You can't write your life story and leave out one of the most important things that happened to you in your life. I think that that would be dishonest, and it would be something people would be very angry about. — Kris Jenner

Those Islamists and their apologists who argue for 'religious toleration' are arrogantly dishonest. — Newt Gingrich

And when she said, Father, I love you, she was neither naive nor dishonest, but the opposite: she was wise and truthful enough to lie. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The class of dishonest bees which I have been describing, may be termed the "Jerry Sneaks" of their profession, and after they have followed it for some time, they lose all disposition for honest pursuits, and assume a hang-dog sort of look, which is very peculiar. Constantly employed in creeping into small holes, and daubing themselves with honey, they often lose all the bright feathers and silky plumes which once so beautifully adorned their bodies, and assume a smooth and almost black appearance; just as the hat of the thievish loafer, acquires a "seedy" aspect, and his garments, a shining and threadbare look. — L.L. Langstroth

To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other. — Josh Radnor

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived and dishonest - but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." ~ John F. Kennedy — Tim O'Shea

This is the story of two men who met in a banana republic. One of them never did anything dishonest in his life except for one crazy minute. The other never did anything honest in his life except for one crazy minute. — Preston Sturges

For give the dry fool drink, then is the fool not dry. Bid the dishonest man mend himself. If he mend, he is no longer dishonest. If he cannot, let the botcher mend him. Anything — William Shakespeare

If a woman is dishonest, that kills it for me. I can't even talk to her anymore. — Norman Reedus

Rhymes, meters, stanza forms, etc., are like servants. If the master is fair enough to win their affection and firm enough to command their respect, the result is an orderly happy household. If he is too tyrannical, they give notice; if he lacks authority, they become slovenly, impertinent, drunk and dishonest. — W. H. Auden

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

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

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

Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest. — Thomas L. Friedman

In reality, those who cheat are indeed the ones who get cheated. Those who are cheated will gain experience and develop (spiritually) in the process. Only money earned dishonestly will be taken away (by nature) from one; rightfully earned money will be put to good use! — Dada Bhagwan

The market tends to pay as a wage what an individual laborer is worth. But the case last studied suggests the question how accurately the law operates in practice. May it not be an honest law, but be so vitiated in its working as to give a dishonest result? — John Bates Clark

The Rothschilds taught the world how to run drunkenly into debt. We common people shall never know, perhaps, all of the hidden meanings that are wrapped up in that wonderful word - " debt." It has so many meanings, so many morals and so many vices. The poor are always urged by their betters never to go into debt. The rich H4 OUR DISHONEST CONSTITUTION and the moderately rich, of course, go into debt as much as they please, or as much as they can. — Anonymous

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

It is easier to say that AS best describes my differences. It makes people more comfortable to have a scientific-sounding term. But actually, I feel dishonest when I say I have AS because the negative effects of my differences on my life are so slight compared to other kids who have AS or other forms of autism and truly suffer. I always feel like I'm doing the people who have these conditions a disservice when I use the medical term, because then people say, Oh, that doesn't seem so bad. What's all the fuss about? — Francisco X Stork

Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime. — Bruce Schneier

O faithless coward! O dishonest wretch!
Wilt thou be made a man out of my vice? — William Shakespeare

You can never guard against a dishonest person. I believe it is human nature, and some people are basically honest and some people are basically dishonest; and the rest, a very large number, sit on the fence. — Harish Bhat

To withhold deserved praise lest it should make its object conceited is as dishonest as to withhold payment of a just debt lest your creditor should spend the money badly. — George Bernard Shaw

Because gold is honest money it is disliked by dishonest men. — Ron Paul

Daughter to that good Earl, once President Of England's Council, and her Treasury, Who lived in both, unstained with gold or fee, And left them both, more in himself content, Till sad the breaking of that Parliament Broke him, as that dishonest victory At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, Killed with report that old man eloquent. Though later born than to have known the days Wherein your father flourished, yet by you, Madam, methinks I see him living yet; So well your words his noble virtues praise, That all both judge you to relate them true, And to possess them, honoured Margaret. — John Milton

In his description of the melancholic, Freud says that such patients are particularly perceptive with respect to their self-image:
When in his heightened self-criticism he describes himself as petty, egoistic, dishonest, lacking in independence, one whose sole aim has been to hide the weaknesses of his own nature, it may be, so far as we know, that he has come pretty near to understanding himself: we only wonder why a man has to be ill before he can be accessible to a truth of this kind. — Sigmund Freud

All dishonest earnings are the blood of the innocent. Honest earnings are like sweet milk and make the mind pious. — Sawan Singh

The high-minded definition of politics is: 'the art or science of government; the art or science concerned with guiding or influencing governmental policy.' It is only when you keep reading in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary that you get closer to the truth: 'political activities characterized by artful and often dishonest practices'. — Cal Thomas

It was a department where you had honesty and integrity stamped right on you when you came into the Los Angeles Police Department. If you violated that, or if you were a dishonest cop, you were terrible. We got rid of you as quickly as possible. — Daryl Gates

To describe this film as dishonest and demagogic would almost be to promote those terms to the level of respectability. To describe this film as a piece of crap would be to run the risk of a discourse that would never again rise above the excremental. To describe it as an exercise in facile crowd-pleasing would be too obvious. Fahrenheit 9/11 is a sinister exercise in moral frivolity, crudely disguised as an exercise in seriousness. It is also a spectacle of abject political cowardice masking itself as a demonstration of 'dissenting' bravery. — Christopher Hitchens

An honest man is strange when he is among dishonest men, but it is a good kind of strangeness. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

I don't care what you do with that negative, you can retouch it, you can spit on it, you can grind it underfoot. The only thing that matters is if it is honest. If [the picture] is honest, you and everybody can tell. If it is dishonest, you and everybody can tell. — Arnold Newman

Neither a fake friend nor a liar can be trusted, with a secret. — Ellen J. Barrier

It is always dishonest for a reviewer to review the author instead of the author's book. — Edward Abbey

Me? I'm dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly. It's the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they're going to do something incredibly... stupid. — Jack Sparrow

An ad that pretends to be art is
at absolute best
like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair. — David Foster Wallace

Can one build an honest house on dishonest foundation? I do not know. But I do know that I want to try. (Edward Ferrier) — Agatha Christie

Some leaders may be honest and good but unwise in legislation they choose to support. Others may possess wisdom but be dishonest and unvirtuous. We must be concerted in our desires and efforts to see men and women represent us who possess all three of these qualities. — Ezra Taft Benson

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

Have you ever asked yourself why one person is honorable and another dishonorable; why one is honest, another dishonest; why one is moral, another immoral? Most individuals do not intend to be dishonest, dishonorable, or immoral. They seem to allow their characters to erode by a series of rationalizations, lies, and compromises. Then when grave temptation presents itself, they haven't the strength of character to do what they know to be right. — Ezra Taft Benson

I'm very disturbed at the picture that was painted by Senator Ted Kennedy that Samuel Alito is not a man of his word, that he is dishonest. The implication that he is not reliable I don't think is a fair characterization of what I've read. — Tom Coburn

But all profit that is out of proportion to the labor expended is dishonest. — Leo Tolstoy

It is often said that Europeans learned religious intolerance from the Old Testament. Then how did we happen to skip over the parts where the laws protect and provide for the poor, and where oppression of them is most fiercely forbidden? It is surely dishonest to suggest we learned anything at all from the Torah, if we have not learned anything good from it. Better to say our vices are our own than to try to exculpate ourselves by implying that our attention strayed during the humane and visionary passages. The law of Moses puts liberation theology to shame in its passionate loyalty to the poor. — Marilynne Robinson

[All the ancient wisdom] tells us that work is necessary to us, as much a part of our condition as mortality; that good work is our salvation and our joy; that shoddy or dishonest or self-serving work is our curse and our doom. We have tried to escape the sweat and sorrow promised in Genesis - only to find that, in order to do so, we must forswear love and excellence, health and joy.
(pg. 44, "The Unsettling of America") — Wendell Berry

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

Technical problems can be remediated. A dishonest corporate culture is much harder to fix. — Bruce Schneier

Prefer a loss to a dishonest gain; the one brings pain at the moment, the other for all time. — Chilon

The acquisition by dishonest means and cunning,' said Levin, feeling that he was incapable of clearly defining the borderline between honesty and dishonesty. 'Like the profits made by banks,' he went on. 'This is evil, I mean, the acquisition of enormous fortunes without work, as it used to be with the spirit monopolists. Only the form has changed. Le roi est mort, vive le roi! Hardly were the monopolies abolished before railways and banks appeared: just another way of making money without work. — Leo Tolstoy

What?"
"I said, Are you dangerous?"
I wasn't sure I heard her correctly. "Who? me? No, I'm not dangerous at all."
"You promise?"
"Sure."
"All right, then," she said. "You can get in."
And that was how I met the unsinkable, irrepressible, wholly undeniable Kikumi Otsugi, a woman who believed in bad men, but not bad dishonest men. I had given her my word of honor that I would not harm her, and she was satisfied. — Will Ferguson

Old me? There is no way to know. All I can do is decide if i trust Marcus or not. And while he has done cruel, evil things, our society is not divided into "good" and "bad". Cruelty does not make a person dishonest, the same way bravery does not make a person kind. Marcus is not good or bad, but both. Well, he is probably more bad than good ... — Veronica Roth

We called one's lifestyle a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one's whole situation ... We don't want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. — Ernest Becker

There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only instinct I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as the sin of avarice. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

It is flagrantly dishonest for an advertising agent to urge consumers to buy a product which he would not allow his own wife to buy. — David Ogilvy

I have the greatest affection for them but I know they're not going to make it for 500 years. They aren't. You know it, too. The Mexicans are a different cup of tea. They have a heritage. At the present time they steal, they're dishonest, but they do have some concept of family life. They don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like. — Richard M. Nixon

It is not true that men can be divided into absolutely honest persons and absolutely dishonest ones. Our honesty varies with the strain put on it. — George Bernard Shaw

Maneck studied beggermaster's excessive chatter, his attempt to hide his heartache. Why did human do that to their feelings? Whether it was anger or love or sadness, they always tried to put something else forward in its place. And then there were those who pretended their emotions were bigger and grander than anyone else's. A little annoyance they acted like gigantic rage; where a smile or chuckle will do, they laughed hysterically. Either way, it was dishonest. — Rohinton Mistry

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

Rakitin was dishonest and was decidedly unaware of it; that, on the contrary, knowing that he wouldn't steal money from the table, he ultimately considered himself a man of the highest integrity. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?
They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. — Hunter S. Thompson

Indians mock their corrupt politicians relentlessly, but they regard their honest politicians with silent suspicion. The first thing they do when they hear of a supposedly 'clean' politician is to grin. It is a cliche that honest politicians in India tend to have dishonest sons, who collect money from people seeking an audience with Dad. — Aravind Adiga

The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Everyone stumbles through it all the same; the main difference lies not in the lack of dysfunction but in the desire to be dishonest about it. Every family has problems, but only some let you see them. The rest just keep their chaos behind closed doors and out of conversation. — Kevin Breel

God is clever, but not dishonest. — Albert Einstein

If all I ever wrote about was inner city freaks, I think it would be dishonest. — Eric Bogosian

I never change.
MRS. CHEVELEY: (elevating her eyebrows) Then life has taught you nothing?
LADY CHILTERN: It has taught me that a person who has once been guilty of a dishonest and dishonorable action may be guilty of it a second time, and should be shunned.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Whould that rule apply to everyone?
LADY CHILTERN: Yes, to everyone, without exception.
MRS. CHEVELEY: Then I am sorry for you, Gertrude, very sorry for you. — Oscar Wilde

An honest buck may not buy any more groceries than a dishonest one, but it'll always be worth more. Especially to me, — Josephine Angelini

The assignment was a two-page essay, in Greek, on any epigram of Callimachus that we chose. I'd done only a page and I started to hurry through the rest in impatient and slightly dishonest fashion, writing out the English and translating word by word. It was something Julian asked us not to do. The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. — Donna Tartt

Alas, poor Yorick!" he said. "She heard mermaids, so it follows that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark. I have caught an everlasting cold, but luckily I am terribly dishonest. I cling to that. — Diana Wynne Jones

If we want to think about racism and how it might play out in drug policy, we have to think about the trial of George Zimmerman. We think about the prosecution, when they said "race is not a factor." It's so dishonest. — Carl Hart

One day Samuel strained his back lifting a bale of hay, and it hurt his feelings more than his back, for he could not imagine a life in which Sam Hamilton was not privileged to lift a bale of hay. He felt insulted by his back, almost as he would have been if one of his children had been dishonest — John Steinbeck

[On dishonest business methods:] ... frequently the defender of the practice falls back on the Christian doctrine of charity, and points out that we are erring mortals and must allow for each other's weaknesses! - an excuse which, if carried to its legitimate conclusion, would leave our business men weeping on one another's shoulders over human frailty, while they picked one another's pockets. — Ida Tarbell

A few of the managers we spoke with for this book worried that the tour of duty framework might give employees "permission" to leave. But permission is not yours to give or to withhold, and believing you have that power is simply a self-deception that leads to a dishonest relationship with your employees. Employees don't need your permission to switch companies, and if you try to assert that right, they'll simply make their move behind your back. — Reid Hoffman

It was [John Gardner's] conviction that if the words in the story were blurred because of the author's insensitivity, carelessness, or sentimentality, then the story suffered from a tremendous handicap. But there was something even worse and something that must be avoided at all costs: if the words and the sentiments were dishonest, the author was faking it, writing about things he didn't care about or believe in, then nobody could ever care anything about it. — Raymond Carver

There are some bands for whom that works very well and it's no disrespect to them because I'm sure there's something honest and natural about it, but for us I feel like it would be dishonest and kinda disrespectful to that artwork to do that. To be like: "Okay, we're going to go back and only play these songs, even though we have an hour to an hour and a half set and we gotta play more songs, but we'll skimp you on your extra half hour." That's just silly to me. — Patrick Stump

Would to God we were all Christians who profess to be Christians, and that we lived up to what we profess. Then would the Christian shine forth "clear as the sun, fair as the moon," and what besides - why, "amazing as an army with
banners"! A consistent Church is an amazing Church - an honest, upright Church would shake the world! The tramp of
godly men is the tramp of heroes; these are the thundering legions that sweep everything before them. The men that are
what they profess to be, hate the semblance of a lie - whatever shape it wears - and would sooner die than do that which is dishonest, or that which would be degrading to the glory of a Heaven-born race, and to the honor of Him by whose name they have been called! O Christians! You will be the world's contempt; you will be their despising, and hissing unless you live for one objective! — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Scorn also to depress thy competitor by any dishonest or unworthy method; strive to raise thyself above him only by excelling him; so shall thy contest for superiority be crowned with honour, if not with success. — Akhenaton

If I were a factory employee, a workman on the railroads or a wage-earner of any sort, I would undoubtedly join the union of my trade. If I disapproved of its policy, I would join in order to fight that policy; if the union leaders were dishonest, I would join in order to put them out. I believe in the union and I believe that all men who are benefited by the union are morally bound to help to the extent of their power in the common interests advanced by the union. — Theodore Roosevelt

the root of every despicable action? Not selfishness, but precisely the absence of a self. Look at them. The man who cheats and lies, but preserves a respectable front. He knows himself to be dishonest, but others think he's honest and he derives his self-respect from that, second-hand. The man who takes credit for an achievement which is not his own. He knows himself to be mediocre, but he's great in the eyes of others. The frustrated wretch who professes love for the inferior and clings to those less endowed, in order to establish his own superiority by comparison. The — Ayn Rand

Lying in bed and smoking my sixth or seventh cigarette of the morning, I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do today. Oh yeah, I gotta write this thing. But that's not work, really, is it? It feels somehow shifty and ... dishonest, making a buck writing. — Anthony Bourdain

Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stony-hearted Rome. — Anthony Trollope

Don't ask to borrow unless you intend to repay them. — Mark Romagna

The heretics were never dishonest men; they were mistaken men. They should not be thought of as men who were deliberately setting out to go wrong and to teach something that is wrong; they have been some of the most sincere men that the Church has ever known. What was the matter with them? Their trouble was this: they evolved a theory and they were rather pleased with it; then they went back with this theory to the Bible, and they seemed to find it everywhere. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

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'm not trying to stay in the same place and I'm not trying to compete with what's currently in fashion. That would be dishonest. But, at the same time, I'm different and the music reflects that to some degree. — Eddie Money

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

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

The United States is the most dishonest, ungodly, unspiritual nation that ever existed in the history of the planet. — Dick Gregory

A dishonest yes is a no to yourself. — Byron Katie

You can't escape an assasin," He leaned forward, shadows swallowing his eyes. "Hangings, bumbling bureaucrats, dishonest crewman, jail - those you can talk your way out of, you try hard enough. But this kind of death is the is the only kind of death. — Cassandra Rose Clarke

There's something different about looking someone in the eyes and doing something dishonest to doing it over the phone or screen. — Justin Welby

Don't think," whispers Satan: he knows that an unconverted heart is like a dishonest businessman's financial records, they will not bear close inspection. "Consider your ways," says the Word of God
stop — J.C. Ryle

It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune ... — Samuel Smiles

The intellectual finds it reassuring to say that the businessman gets his money by luck; or monopoly, or exploitation, or dishonesty, or what have you. As a matter of fact, the truly dishonest man will last longer in college -teaching or the ministry than he will in the business world. — Benjamin A. Rogge