Integrity quotes
2.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"Don't walk through life just playing football. Don't walk through life just being an athlete. Athletics will fade. Character and integrity and really making an impact on someone's life, that's the ultimate vision, that's the ultimate goal - bottom line."
"When will the state of the country be sound?... When its people believe that the end result of cowardice is more disastrous than that of behaving with integrity."
"I have always secretly felt that what mankind should be in an ideal sense is that mixture of people and races. I really believe in it. I don't think there is anything sacred in the integrity of race, white or black."
"A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in the most honorable form."
"I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen."
"Remember that reputation and integrity are your most valuable assets - and can be lost in a heartbeat."
"Integrity is the glue that holds our way of life together."
"Civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind, independent of the prevalent one among the crowds, and in opposition to it - a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. Only an ethical movement can rescue us from barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals."
"There are two principles on which all men of intellectual integrity and good will can agree, as a 'basic minimum,' as a precondition of any discussion, co-operation or movement toward an intellectual Renaissance. . . . They are not axioms, but until a man has proved them to himself and has accepted them, he is not fit for an intellectual discussion. These two principles are: a. that emotions are not tools of cognition; b. that no man has the right to initiate the use of physical force against others."
"Then, without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day; of course, you achieve quite a lot in the course of time. Anyone can do this, it costs nothing and is certainly very helpful. Whoever doesn't know it must learn and find by experience that a quiet conscience makes one strong."
"Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not. Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can."
"The heart and soul of loving yourself is integrity and the peace of conscience it inspires."
"The key to acting with integrity is to simply stop playing the game."
"Remember, if the time should come when you have to make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory."
"We would frequently be ashamed of our good deeds if people saw all of the motives that produced them."
"Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who know it completely would perish, in which case the strength of a spirit should be measured according to how much of the 'truth' one could still barely endure- or to put it more clearly, to what degree one would require it to be thinned down, shrouded, sweetened, blunted, falsified."
"The only thing we have in this world that is utterly and intrinsically ours is our integrity."
"Never lose your self-respect, nor be too familiar with yourself when you are alone. Let your integrity itself be your own standard of rectitude, and be more indebted to the severity of your own judgment of yourself than to all external percepts. Desist from unseemly conduct, rather out of respect for your own virtue than for the strictures of external authority."
"Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort."
"There is an ineffable mystery that underlies ourselves and the world. It is the darkness from which the light shines. When you recognize the integrity of the universe and that death is as certain as birth, then you can relax and accept that this is the way it is. There is nothing else to do."
