The responses to Why People Lie So Damn Much have been amazing. If you haven’t read that blog post on the subject of lying, you may want to check it out before reading this follow-up post on honesty.
Facebook messages, emails, and comments over the last week show that people are, for the most part, in agreement that we should all work on telling the truth more often. However, one thing is clear: Many people doubt if honesty is always the best policy. There is a lot of confusion about when, if ever, it is right to lie.
Are there times when telling the truth is NOT the highest choice? If someone’s feelings may be hurt by the truth, is it better to tell a lie instead?
Personally, I still believe honesty is the best policy. However, there’s always more than one way to follow through. While some people take pride in being “brutally honest,” a harmful approach to relaying the truth is no more honorable than telling a lie.
When you’ve told the truth with as much tenderness, concern, positive intention and love as possible, you’ve made the highest choice. You’ve done the “right” thing. How that message of truth is received by another is outside of your control. There is much that you can do to comfort a person who is having trouble dealing with the truth. And that is far more respectable and loving than telling a comforting lie.
When it comes to honesty, as with everything else in our lives, we have choices. We can attempt to use compassion as an excuse for lying, or we can compassionately retain our integrity by telling the truth with love. A tough call? Sometimes, yes it seems that way. But it shouldn’t be! How can we expect to experience self improvement without first being truth with ourselves and those around us?
Here are a few truth quotes to get you thinking even more on the subject of honesty:
25 Honesty & Truth Quotes
- “People who are brutally honest get more satisfaction out of the brutality than out of the honesty.” -Richard J. Needham
- “A half truth is a whole lie.” -Yiddish Proverb
- “A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.” -William Blake
- “No pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage-ground of truth.” -Francis Bacon
- “A harmful truth is better than a useful lie.” -Thomas Mann
- “The only way to tell the truth is to speak with kindness. Only the words of a loving man can be heard.” -Henry David Thoreau
- “Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships.” -Unknown
- “I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.” –Pietro Ariteno
- “You can’t undo anything you’ve already done, but you can face up to it. You can tell the truth. You can seek forgiveness. And then let God do the rest.” –Unknown
- “Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “Truth never tranquilizes. The defining property of truth is its ability to disturb.” -Solomon Short
- “It is not nearly so important how well a message is received as how well it is sent. You cannot take responsibility for how well another accepts your truth; you can only ensure how well it is communicated. And by how well, I don’t mean merely how clearly; I mean how lovingly, how compassionately, how sensitively, how courageously, and how completely.” -Neale Donald Walsch
- “Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.” -Henri-Frederic Amiel
- “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you” -Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.” -Maya Angelou
- “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic” -John F. Kennedy
- “Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving it as friend.” -Rabindranath Tagore
- “We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.” -Tad Williams
- “The naked truth is always better than the best dressed lie.” –Ann Landers
- “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.” -Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.” -George Elliot
- “It is one of the severest tests of friendship to tell your friend his faults. So to love a man that you cannot bear to see a stain upon him, and to speak painful truth through loving words, that is friendship.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “A single lie destroys a whole reputation for integrity” -Baltasar Gracian
- “Peace if possible, truth at all costs.” -Martin Luther
- “Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others.” -Chuck Swindoll
DECEIT DETECTOR – NEVER BE LIED TO AGAIN
Related Self Improvement Blog Posts
Living in Denial – Why We Like Being Lied To
How to Trust Again – 7 Steps to Overcome Betrayal
Nea is a Transformational Life Coach whose mission is to help you love your life.
If you desire the “good life” and you want to know how Nea can help you attain it, contact her now.
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I loved this post of yours Nea. Wonderful quotes indeed.
Stumbled!
I have felt the sting of the dilemma you mentioned. Sometimes I have done the “right” thing, and felt absolutely terrible about it. I have actually hid the truth in a situation that harmed me and made me look bad in order to help someone else save face.
In that case, telling a lie actually harmed me, but spared the other person and helped them. Sometimes these types of choices just don’t exist in the world of black and white, but in that grey area.
This was a great post and thank you.
“Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.” -George Elliot
I think this explains why some lies are told…..it is often easier, So to be completely honest we often need to be very strong and it can sometimes meaning hurting those we love or causing other problems.
But I agree it is the best policy and always being honest also helps us to grow and develop,
Many thanks,
Kate
I have to agree with ‘honesty is the best policy’. I didn’t always use that when I was younger, but I get it now. It’s not so much what you are saying but HOW you say it. People like and expect honesty but they also expect to be told nicely. I, now more than ever, am very careful with my words. Being a brutally honest person, I know that I have put people on the defense unintentionally.
Thanks for sharing your words!
Ali
deep quotes there, really make you think about what you say when and where. Thanks for sharing. Enjoyed your words
This is a great collection Nea. I love the way a good quote gets right to the heart of a matter.
I found so many quotes that really resonated with me, but I settled on these 25 that seemed to really spell out the message of truth. I’m so glad you enjoyed them.
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