Francois de La Rochefoucauld Quotes

You don't luck into integrity. You work at it.

Success gives the character of honesty to some classes of wickedness.

Look at all those American preachers who got caught with their pants down. They say one thing and they are doing another. I try to be more honest about it, both in my thinking and my behavior.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

Morality has nothing to do with such a man as I am.

What we take for virtue is often but an assemblage of various ambitions and activities that chance, or our own astuteness, have arranged in a certain manner; and it is not always out of courage or purity that men are brave, and women chaste.

The biggest difference between people is between those who are trying to do the right thing - whether or not they succeed - and those for whom the only question is how much they can get away with.

Virtue must be valuable, if men and women of all degrees pretend to have it.

I'm actually a very moral guy.

The virtue involved in helping those one loves is not 'selflessness' or 'sacrifice,' but integrity.

Observe this, that tho a woman swear, forswear, lie, dissemble, back-bite, be proud, vain, malicious, anything, if she secures the main chance, she's still virtuous; that's a maxim.

There are people who think that honesty is always the best policy. This is a superstition. There are times when the appearance of it is worth six of it.

Virtue does not come from wealth, but wealth, and every other good thing which men have comes from virtue.

An honorable man or woman is one who is truthful; free from deceit; above cheating, lying, stealing, or any form of deception. An honorable man or woman is one who learns early that one cannot do wrong and feel right. A man's character is judged on how he keeps his word and his agreements.

If the Coastal Republic had believed in the existence of virtue, it could at least have aspired to hypocrisy.

Fewer possess virtue, than those who wish us to believe that they possess it.

We don't claim to have perfect morals, but at least we have a huge area of things that, while legal, are beneath us. We won't do them. Currently, there's a culture in Americathat says that anything that won't send you to prison is OK.

A man may be very sincere in good principles, without having good practice.

The man of character, sensitive to the meaning of what he is doing, will know how to discover the ethical paths in the maze of possible behavior.

Integrity, like humility, is a quality which vanishes the moment we are conscious of it in ourselves. We see it only in others.

Integrity means having the courage to do what is right, and what is aligned with your values, no matter the situation.

He who would govern his actions by the laws of virtue must regulate his thoughts by those of reason.

Integrity is the evidence of all civil virtues.

No man is so exquisitely honest or upright in living, but that ten times in his life he might not lawfully be hanged.