On Honesty

“Lying lips are abomination to the LORD: but they that deal truly are his delight.”

“A false balance is abomination to the LORD: but a just weight is his delight.”

“When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it: this is knowledge.”

“Neither saying anything contrary to the truth, nor doing anything contrary to justice.”

“If a man has transgressed one law, and speaks lies, and scoffs at another world, there is no evil he will not do.”

“Of all forms of injustice, none is more flagrant than that of the hypocrite who, at the very moment when he is most false, makes it his business to appear virtuous.”

“It is a contribution to truth, an array of facts, the perusal of which it is hoped will stimulate this great American Republic to demand that justice be done though the heavens fall.”

“Truth, as it is a simple principle, which admits of no modification, would be common to both.”

Researchers dropped more than seventeen thousand wallets in forty countries. People returned them more often, not less, when there was money inside.

Pooling ninety experiments in which lying was private, profitable and unpunishable, economists found that people lie far less than pure self-interest predicts. Most want to be honest, and to be seen as honest.

“Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.”