Intellectual honesty

“ Every inch of truth has been conquered only after a struggle, almost everything to which our heart, our love and our trust in life cleaves, has had to be sacrificed for it Greatness of soul is necessary for this: the service of truth is the hardest of all services.—What then is meant by honesty in things intellectual? ”

“ We know that the standard is higher to-day—we know that the intellectual light is greater—we know that the human mind is better equipped to deal with all questions of human interest, than at any other time within the known history of the human race.
It will not do to say that "our Lord and his apostles must at least be regarded as honest men." Let this be admitted, and what does it prove? Honesty is not enough. Intelligence and honesty must go hand in hand. ”

“ It is disingenuous to take a word popularly respected and attribute to it another sense. Such a course is not strictly honest, and therefore not purely intellectual; for the foundation of the intellectual life is honesty. ”

“ Intellectual integrity, honesty, and sincerity are at bottom not matters of conscious purpose but of quality of active response. Their acquisition is fostered of course by conscious intent, but self-deception is very easy. ”

“ Can you show me a detail of human nature which is truly honest? Say, I've watched it all my life, I've built every sort of construction on it. Wherever I have built in the belief that honesty is the foundation of human nature things have dropped with a smash. ”

“ Honesty looks people straight in the eye, tells the plain truth about its goods, stands on its merits, asks no favors, has nothing to conceal, fears no investigation.—This bold, open, self-reliant quality of honesty is what makes it a manly thing, or a virtue. ”

“ But it is so easy to cite the old-time virtues of honesty, stability, truthfulness, fair-dealing, etc., as proving character, its value, and the power of any one, however weak or defective, personally to achieve it. ”

“ A man who has not honesty enough, or fairness enough, to weight the hind quarter of an ox—shall he be trusted to weigh out gold dust and dimes, and count the pulses of life? A man not honest enough, a combination not honest enough, to carry a letter without mutilating it into a falsehood, to prove words in which honesty, intelligence, and fairness may be entirely omitted. ”

“ I can look back over my life and see just where my honesty began to waver, just when I first compromised with my own conscience and persuaded myself that something was fair and honest when I knew it was not. ”

“ But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book or his piece of art. ”

“ In regard, for example, to the practice of the most common and every day duties, who can doubt the truth of the trite adage, honesty is the best policy? This is, in effect, no more than saying, that the moral laws of the universe are constituted upon such principles, as to make it every man’s interest to obey them. ”

“ Your honesty is not to be based either on religion or policy. Both your religion and policy must be based on it. Your honesty must be based, as the sun is, in vacant heaven; poised, as the lights in the firmament, which have rule over the day and over the night If you ask why you are to be honest—you are, in the question itself, dishonored 'Because you are a man,' is the only answer ”

“ We laud the brave and outspoken and those supposed to have the courage of their convictions—but only when these convictions are acceptable or indifferent to us. Otherwise, honesty and frankness become mere impudence. ”

“ Honesty, Humanity, and Love of Justice: These, I hope, I shall always, although it be at the Expence of some Scandal, prefer to that cold Principle; inasmuch as I think it a greater Character to be an honest, than to be a wise Man. ”

“ The second is with reference to the men themselves; to divest them, if by any means it may be possible, of their roguery; to divest them even of a little of their roguery, if so much as that can be done; to teach them that trite lesson, of honesty being the best policy,—so hard for men to learn when honesty has been, as it were, for many years past out of their sight, and even beyond their understanding. ”

“ Falsehood, if not actually the mother, is at all events the nurse of kindness. In the same way, honesty has been brought to maturity by the need for a semblance of honesty and integrity: in hereditary aristocracies. ”

“ And we know that in order to win some part of that great trust we must obey the standards of honesty and decency that lie below the surface and only need to be called to life and action in order to be used. ”

“ Ay, I suppose you are what those fools who affect to be good and wise among us, call an honest man—whose whole life is only one broad varnished lie. Honesty is a mere term for a purpose. Where are there greater rogues than they who would be teachers of their fellows, and under the veil of religion commit the vilest abominations, and dub them with the name of honesty? ”

“ It is as much as any moralist ventures to assert, that, other circumstances being given, honesty is the best policy, and that with parity of advantages an honest person has a better chance than a rogue. ”

“ If we desire to live a life of truth and honesty, to make our word as strong as our bond, let us not expect to keep ourselves along the narrow line of truth under the constant lash of the whip of duty. Let us begin to love the truth, to fill our mind and life with the strong white light of sincerity and sterling honesty. Let us love the truth so strongly that there will develop within us, without our conscious effort, an ever-present horror of a lie. ”

“ Unless we are, it will be impossible for us to enter into that spiritual contentment enjoyed by those who are honest with themselves. If we are untrue to ourselves how can we be true to others? The framework of a man's moral being must be that of honesty. ”

“ His honesty brought him to weariness and painfulness, to cold and nakedness, to stripes and imprisonment, to a hateful reputation on the earth. Honesty the best policy for personal selfishness! Ask the "Holy Alliance." Honesty is the means to self-respect, to growth in manly qualities, to high human welfare,— a means to the kingdom of heaven. When men claim that honesty is the best policy, is it this which they mean? ”

“ A letter lies before me, one out of many others asking me how the author of "The Shadow Christ," which is a study of the religious values in suffering and self-sacrifice in this world, takes the low ground that honesty is the best policy. ”

“ The problem that confronts him is the fact that has always been very evident in every age, that honesty is not by any means always the best policy, if by that you mean that it pays you best. I am putting it in homely language. It is a big question. Do the world's good things go predominantly to the good men? or do they go to the clever and unscrupulous men? In the professions is it your honest, truthful man, of modest merit, that succeeds best, or your humbug, impostor, flatterer, self-advertiser? ”

“ All the more necessary are the self-knowledge and honesty, in general, which admit the existence of this background, and which do not, by denying it, deny the connection of the whole, which is, for the most part, much more important than the analyzed parts. ”

“ Out of all the complications that arise, however, there is not one distinctly new quality evolved. We distinguish in this region of conduct such absolute characteristics as those of honesty (under many names) and tolerance, but they are all of the composite class, and have their root, for the most part, in justice and truthfulness intermingled, with benevolence sometimes imparting its amiable tone to them. ”

“ Truth, and real good sense, and thorough integrity, carry along with them a peculiar consciousness of their own genuineness: there is a feeling belonging to them which does not accompany their counterfeits, error, folly, half-honesty, partial and slight regards to virtue and right, so far only as they are consistent with that course of gratification which men happen to be set upon. ”

“ Truth and honesty there cannot be two opinions about; and 67 in the art of living with others truth and honesty bear a great part. Said Oliver Cromwell, “Give me a man that hath principle—I know where to have him.” ”

“ These were the words of a plain, honest man, who was convinced that his conduct had been right, that his demands had been wise, and was ready to return to rebellion when he found his expectations sliding away. Here, as so often in this world, we have to regret that honesty of purpose is no security for soundness of understanding; that high-hearted, sincere men, in these great questions, will bear themselves so perversely in their sincerity, that at last there is no resource but to dismiss them out of a world in which they have lost their way, and will not, or cannot, recover themselves. ”

“ Those who have their eyes opened to see and understand where honesty and uprightness are, what righteousness is, and to discern between that which is right and that which is wrong, often rise here and talk about it. I do so myself; and when I speak of dishonesty among the people, I look at them as they are, whether I tell it or not. This is the most honest people on the earth. There is more honesty in this community than in any other community on the earth—that is, that we have any knowledge of. The great majority of this community are as honest as they know how to be. ”

“ Opinion is divided as to the course which will be pursued; but from all I hear, and all I observe, I am strongly inclined to believe that when they have recovered from their bewilderment they will come to the conclusion that, in this instance at least, honesty is the best policy ”

“ If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard, if not unjust things; and for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the Muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain, houshold truths. ”

“ The Reply warms with its subject; it shows us that no error can be otherwise than honest, inasmuch as nothing which involves honesty, or its reverse, can, from the constitution of our nature, enter into the formation of opinion. ”

“ It implies no scarification, no blemish, no unsoundness, no abrasion, no disfigurement, no distortion, no defect. In ordinary parlance integrity and honesty are regarded as synonyms, but a close analysis discovers honesty to be but one of the many manifestations of integrity. ”

“ This is the principal rule imprinted upon the minds of the children in certain bourgeois environments. It is an honesty of a special kind that is inculcated, not a moral honesty, but an honesty for the sake of one’s own interests. ”

“ We want honesty. Well, what makes people honest? Honesty. Does anything else spread the influence of honesty, except honesty? Are we here facing a scientific fact? Is this a law of the transference of human energy, or is it not? If it is, you cannot beat it. You cannot imagine any situation where your own total force, in favor of honesty, will consist of anything else than honesty. Of course you may put a case where honesty will result in somebody’s death. ”

“ The minds of all men were on fire: deep designs were laid, and no practice stuck at that might be proper to advance the execution of them. In this situation of affairs, what could simple honesty do, but defeat the purpose and endanger the safety of its master? I now, first, began to reflect that this was a virtue for other times: at least, that not to qualify it, in some sort, was, at such a juncture, not honesty, but imprudence: and when I had once fallen into this train of thinking, it is wonderful how many things occurred to me to justify and recommend it. ”

“ But, does be advance any reason, or the shadow of tiny reason, for dissenting from the opinion formed by a man whose honesty he acknowledges, on a point on which it is scarcely possible to be mistaken? ”

“ Honesty will demand a real conversion, a change in our attitude to ourselves and to one another. We shall have, indeed, to reassure ourselves of the sincerity of our intentions, to begin as the first necessary step to accept ourselves as we are and to give up what we desire to pretend we are, to learn to be truthful to ourselves about ourselves. ”

“ Then the qualities of HONESTY, FIDELITY, and TRUTH, are praised, in the first place, for their tendency to the good of society; and, being established on that foundation, they are also approved as advantageous to the individual's own self. ”

“ Of the moral qualities, courage and self-confidence must be combined with caution, and the whole elevated by honesty and truthfulness of nature. At this point the philosophical reader will perhaps demur, and inquire whether those clients who are in the wrong find any difficulty in obtaining the most talented defenders—for a con-si-der-ation. ”

“ It underlies the labour of the philosopher, the investigator, the moralist, the poet, the novelist, the critic, the historian, and the compiler. It is visible in the publication of opinions, in the structure of sentences, and in the fidelity of citations. Men utter insincere thoughts, they express themselves in echoes and affectations, and they are careless or dishonest in their use of the labours of others, all the time believing in the virtue of sincerity, all the time trying to make others believe honesty to be the best policy. ”

“ Why honesty is the best policy—"Because you're never caught in a lie; if you are, always there's nothing to hinder you from getting a position."
Definitions. (d) Conceit "One who only thinks about himself. One who thinks nobody is as good as he is—the branches of work what he's in—pretty, or anything that way." ”