Probity Quotes

• Take from a man his reputation for probity, and the more shrewd and clever he is, the more hated and mistrusted he becomes.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Clever, Men, Reputation

  Marcus Tullius Cicero (2014). “De Officiis: (English Edition)”, p.94, LONDON: WILLIAM HEINEMANN NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN CO.

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• The public are entitled to have an absolute guarantee of the financial probity and integrity of their elected representatives, their officials and above all of Ministers. They need to know that they are under financial obligations to nobody, other than public lending institutions, except to the extent that they are publicly declared.

  Bertie Ahern

  Integrity, Needs, Guarantees

  "Turning the Tables on McDowell". www.irishtimes.com. September 28, 2006.

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• Financial institutions, the corporate world and civil society - all must uphold high standards of probity in their working. Only a genuine partnership between the Government and its people can bring about positive change to create a just society.

  Pratibha Patil

  Government, People, High Standards

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• It is right that we be concerned with the scientific probity of metaphysics.

  Gabriel Marcel

  Metaphysics, Concerned

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• There are very many characteristics which go into making a model civil servant. Prominent among them are probity, industry, good sense, good habits, good temper, patience, order, courtesy, tact, self-reliance, many deference to superior officers, and many consideration for inferiors.

  Chester A. Arthur

  Order, Self, Habit

  First annual message, 1881.

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• The German intellect wants the French sprightliness, the fine practical understanding of the English, and the American adventure; but it has a certain probity, which never rests in a superficial performance, but asks steadily, To what end? A German public asks for a controlling sincerity.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Adventure, Understanding, Want

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1850). “Representative Men: Seven Lectures”, p.208

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• Under the circumstances, may I suggest another means of encouraging probity in elective office. I refer to term limitations, which can serve ends beyond that of saving congressional souls.

  James L. Buckley

  Mean, Office, Soul

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• Recognized probity is the surest of all oaths.

  Suzanne Curchod

  Oath

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• Integrity, probity, ethics and transparency is needed but most important is the culture of discipline

  Vinod Rai

  Integrity, Discipline, Important

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• Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.

  Felix Adler

  Roots, Fruit, Corruption

  Founding address of New York Society for Ethical Culture, May 15, 1876.

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• When we come to the moral principles on which the government is to be administered, we come to what is proper for all conditions of society. Liberty, truth, probity, honor, are declared to be the four cardinal principles of society. I believe that morality, compassion, generosity, are innate elements of the human constitution; that there exists a right independent of force.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Believe, Independent, Compassion

  Thomas Jefferson, John Dewey (2008). “The Essential Jefferson”, p.85, Courier Corporation

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• When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

  Theodore Dalrymple

  Liars, Lying, People

  "Our Culture, What’s Left Of It". Interview with Jamie Glazov, archive.frontpagemag.com. August 31, 2005.

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• Our probity is not less at the mercy of fortune than our property.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Mercy, Fortune, Property

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• Rejoicing not in the many but in the probity of the few, we toil for truth alone.

  William of Conches

  Society, Toil, Rejoice

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• Seriousness is no more a guarantee of truth, insight, authenticity or probity, than humour is a guarantee of superficiality and stupidity.

  Stephen Fry

  Stupidity, Guarantees, Authenticity

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• True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.

  David Foster Wallace

  Cheer, Exercise, Years

  David Foster Wallace (2011). “The Pale King”, p.19, Penguin UK

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• Will mankind never learn that policy is not morality,--that it never secures any moral right, but considers merely what is expedient? chooses the available candidate,--who is invariably the devil,--and what right have his constituents to be surprised, because the devil does not behave like an angel of light? What is wanted is men, not of policy, but of probity,--who recognize a higher law than the Constitution, or the decision of the majority.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Angel, Men, Light

  Henry David Thoreau (2000). “Walden and Other Writings: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.718, Modern Library

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• Tell a scoundrel, three or four times a day, that he is the pink of probity, and you make him at least the perfection of "respectability" in good earnest. On the other hand, accuse an honorable man, too petinaciously, of being a villain, and you fill him with a perverse ambition to show you that you are not altogether in the wrong.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Revenge, Ambition, Men

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• The perfection of a thing consists in its essence; there are perfect criminals, as there are men of perfect probity.

  Mazo de la Roche

  Men, Essence, Perfect

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• Here's the thing about politics: It's not an expression of your moral purity and your ethics and your probity and your fond dreams of some utopian future. Progressive people constantly fail to get this.

  Tony Kushner

  Dream, Expression, People

  "Tony Kushner, Radical Pragmatist". Interview with Ben Greenman, www.motherjones.com. November/December 2003.

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• A writer should be of as great probity and honesty as a priest of God. He is either honest or not, as a woman is either chaste or not, and after one piece of dishonest writing he is never the same again.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Honesty, Writing, Editing

  Men at War introduction (1942)

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• For it is not true, as some treatise-mongers lay down in their systems, of the probity of the speaker, that it contributes nothing to persuasion; but moral character nearly, I may say, carries with it the most sovereign efficacy in making credible.

  Aristotle

  Character, May, Sovereign

  Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes (1833). “Aristotle's Treatise on Rhetoric”, p.12

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• Those of us placed in a position of leadership must be prepared to grasp the nettle if we unite in doing so, and if, in addition, we set a worthy example and a marat on pace in probity, unselfishness, and self-sacrifice, the people will follow, all too readily, in our footsteps.

  Obafemi Awolowo

  Sacrifice, Self, People

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• Some Christians want enough of Christ to be identified with him but not enough to be seriously inconvenienced; they genuinely cling to basic Christian orthodoxy but do not want to engage in serious Bible study; they value moral probity, especially of the public sort, but do not engage in war against inner corruptions; they fret over the quality of the preacher's sermon but do not worry much over the quality of their own prayer life. Such Christians are content with mediocrity.

  D. A. Carson

  Christian, Prayer, War

  D. A. Carson (1992). “A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and His Prayers”, p.121, Baker Academic

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• The man Dickens, whom the world at large thought it knew, stood for all the Victorian virtues - probity, kindness, hard work, sympathy for the down-trodden, the sanctity of domestic life - even as his novels exposed the violence, hypocrisy, greed, and cruelty of the Victorian age.

  Robert Gottlieb

  Kindness, Hard Work, Men

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