The trite saying that honesty is the best policy has met with the just criticism that honesty is not policy. The real honest man is honest from conviction of what is right, not from policy.
quote by Robert E. Lee
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Related quotes
Honesty moves hearts
as honest. As policy,
it is justly best.
haiku by Edgardo Tugade (22 July 2008)
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Honesty may be the best policy, but it's important to remember that apparently, by elimination, dishonesty is the second-best policy.
quote by George Carlin
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Certainly he is not of the generation that regards honesty as the best policy. However, he does regard it as a policy. (On President Richard M Nixon)
quote by Irving Layton
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Honesty is the best policy; but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.
quote by Richard Whately, Archbishop of Dublin
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I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
quote by Walter Besant
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We must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.
quote by George Bernard Shaw
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In all honesty
In all honesty
today has been
something out of the ordinary.
In all honesty
I could do with some christmas carols
and a mug of hot chocolate.
In all honesty
walking on the road without a sidewalk
is more exhilerating than anything else.
In all honesty
watching fog settle over the road
can bring tears to anyones eyes.
In all honesty
you're the only person
I'm mostly honest to.
In all honesty
this poem
is entirely honest.
poem by Erica Francis
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Bush promised a foreign policy of humility and a domestic policy of compassion. He has given us a foreign policy of arrogance and a domestic policy that is cynical, myopic and cruel.
Foreign policy can mean several things, not only foreign policy in the narrow sense. It can cover foreign policy, relations with the developing world, and enlargement as well.
quote by Romano Prodi
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Honesty is the best policy.
quote by Benjamin Franklin
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Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
quote by Mark Twain
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Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.
Policy (a cynical political poem)
Honesty
is the best Policy
but its passage
through the legislature
has
been somewhat
obstructed
Wall, Cave, And Pillar Statements, After Asoka
In order to perfect all readers
the statements should he carved
on rock walls, on cave walls,
and on the sides of pillars so
the charm of their instruction can
affect the mountain climbers near
the cliffs, the plainsmen near
the pillars, and the city people near
the caves they go to on vacations.
The statements should, and in a fair
script, spell out the right text and gloss
of the Philosopher’s jocular remark. Text:
“Honesty is the best policy.” Gloss:
“He means not ‘best’ but ‘policy,’
(this is the joke of it) whereas in fact
Honesty is Honesty, Best
is Best, and Policy is Policy,
the three terms being not
related, but here loosely allied.
What is more important is that ‘is’
is, but the rocklike truth of the text
resides in the ‘the’. The ‘the’ is The.
By this means the amusing sage
has raised or caused to be raised
the triple standard in stone:
the single is too simple for life,
the double is mere degrading hypocrisy,
but the third combines the first two
in a possible way, and contributes
something unsayable of its own:
this is the pit, nut, seed, or stone
of the fruit when the fruit has been
digested:
It is good to do good for the wrong
reason, better to do good for the good
reason, and best of all to do good
good: i.e. when the doer and doee
and whatever passes between them
are beyond all words like ‘grace’
or ‘anagogic insight,’ or definitions like
‘particular instance of a hoped-at-law,’
and which the rocks alone can convey.
This is the real reason for the rock walls,
the cave walls and pillars, and not the base
desires for permanence and display
that the teacher’s conceit suggests.”
That is the end of the statements, but,
in order to go on a way after the end
so as to make up for having begun
after the beginning, and thus to come around
to it in order to include the whole thing,
add: “In some places the poignant slogan,
‘Morality is a bad joke like everything else,’
may be written or not, granted that space
exists for the vulgar remarks, the dates,
initials and hearts of lovers, and all
other graffiti of the prisoners of this world.”
poem by Alan Dugan
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Hypocrisy
This world is full of
Hypocrisy.
I lie,
You lie
We all lie
To save our skin,
And then we preach
Honesty is the best
Policy.
poem by Aparna Chatterjee
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There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making.
quote by Richard Cecil
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The Democrats have no actual policy proposals of their own unless constant carping counts as a policy.
quote by Ann Coulter
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Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.
quote by John F. Kennedy
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For the sake of our interests, as well as of our honour and dignity, we were obliged to see that we won for our international policy the same independence that we had secured for our European policy.
quote by Bernhard von Bulow
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