Honesty is the best policy

Honesty is the best policy. No matter how smart you want to be, at the end of the day, honesty will get you farther than deceit or manipulation.

Honesty in its widest sense is always admirable. The trite saying that 'honesty is the best policy' has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The seems to be true. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.

Honesty is the best policy.

2534. Honesty is the best Policy.

I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy.

Honesty's the best policy.

Honesty is the best policy, not the easiest nor the most popular.

Honesty is the best policy; a policy is, after all, a strategy for living in the polis — in the city …

Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.

Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.

Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart! Might a sense of the true aims of life elevate the tone of politics and trade, till public and private honor become identical!

"I'll put you wise. You remember the old top-liner in the copy book — "Honesty is the Best Policy"? That's it. I'm working honesty for a graft. I'm the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There's no competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he'd have my address inside of two minutes. There isn't big money in it, but it's a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights."

The best way to be thought honest is to be honest.