Me, I'm dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you have to watch out for.
The laboring people should unite and should protect themselves against all idlers. You can divide mankind into two classes: the laborers and the idlers, the supporters and the supported, the honest and the dishonest. Every man is dishonest who lives upon the unpaid labor of others, no matter if he occupies a throne. All laborers should be brothers.
One percent of people will always be honest and never steal," the locksmith said. "Another one percent will always be dishonest and always try to pick your lock and steal your television. And the rest will be honest as long as the conditions are right - but if they are tempted enough, they'll be dishonest too. Locks won't protect you from the thieves, who can get in your house if they really want to. They will only protect you from the mostly honest people who might be tempted to try your door if it had no lock".
Dishonest people conceal their faults from themselves as well as others, honest people know and confess them.
The only differences one can and should allow in socialism are between hard working people and idlers and between honest people and dishonest people.
Dishonest, which is Hillary Clinton in the eyes of the American people, beats crazy. Dishonest loses to normal. So, let's just pick somebody out of the phone book if we have to.
There are only two kinds of men in this world: Honest men and dishonest men. ...Any man who says the world owes him a living is dishonest. The same God that made you and me made this earth. And He planned it so that it would yield every single thing that the people on it need. But He was careful to plan it so that it would only yield up its wealth in exchange for the labor of man. Any man who tries to share in that wealth without contributing the work of his brain or his hands is dishonest.
It is possible that the scrupulously honest man may not grow rich so fast as the unscrupulous and dishonest one; but the success will be of a truer kind, earned without fraud or injustice. And even though a man should for a time be unsuccessful, still he must be honest: better lose all and save character. For character is itself a fortune. . . .
I would say that today, dishonesty is the rule, and honesty the exception. It could be, statistically, that more people are honest than dishonest, but the few that really control things are not honest, and that tips the balance.
Honesty is the foundation of a sound character and the keystone of all other virtues. It is the cement without which all other redeeming features are fractured and without anchor. A dishonest person may be kind, witty, and very capable, but the strength of character simply isn't there. Honesty does not come by degrees. A person is either all honest or he is dishonest. You can be true or you can be false, but you can't be both at the same time.
It is strange how in some things honest people can be dishonest without the slightest compunction.
Societies without a reservoir of people who don't follow the rules lack an important mechanism for societal evolution. Vibrant societies need a dishonest minority; if society makes its dishonest minority too small, it stifles dissent as well as common crime.
Most contemporary fiction sucks. It's intellectually dishonest, often morally dishonest. It's cheap and easy. It pretends to be deep but is really quite shallow.
A dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest.
Learn to trust and be trustworthy. When you treat someone as if they are being dishonest, you will train them to be. It's more powerful to treat someone as if they are being honest, and you will train them to now be honest, even if they weren't then.
Is the English press honest or dishonest? At normal times it is deeply dishonest. All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news. Yet I do not suppose there is one paper in England that can be straightforwardly bribed with hard cash. In the France of the Third Republic all but a very few of the newspapers could notoriously be bought over the counter like so many pounds of cheese.