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Honesty is the best policy but he who is governed by that maxim is not an honest man.

Richard Whately

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Richard Whately
Age: 76 †
Born: 1787
Born: February 1
Died: 1863
Died: October 8
Economist
Philosopher
Priest
Theologian
London
England
Men
Maxim
Maxims
Governed
Honesty
Policy
Honest
Truth
Best

More quotes by Richard Whately

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Unless people can be kept in the dark, it is best for those who love the truth to give them the full light.
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When men have become heartily wearied of licentious anarchy, their eagerness has been proportionately great to embrace the opposite extreme of rigorous despotism.
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Superstition is not, as has been defined, an excess of religious feeling, but a misdirection of it, an exhausting of it on vanities of man's devising.
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Even supposing there were some spiritual advantage in celibacy, it ought to be completely voluntary.
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Christianity, contrasted with the Jewish system of emblems, is truth in the sense of reality, as substance is opposed to shadows, and, contrasted with heathen mythology, is truth as opposed to falsehood.
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Women never reason, or, if they do, they either draw correct inferences from wrong premises, or wrong inferences from correct premises and they always poke the fire from the top.
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Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance.
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Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves.
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It is worth noticing that those who assume an imposing demeanor and seek to pass themselves off for something beyond what they are, are not unfrequently as much underrated by some as overrated by others.
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The tendency of party spirit has ever been to disguise and propagate and support error.
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It is also important to guard against mistaking for good-nature what is properly good-humor,--a cheerful flow of spirits and easy temper not readily annoyed, which is compatible with great selfishness.
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He that is not open to conviction is not qualified for discussion.
Richard Whately
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That is suitable to a man, in point of ornamental expense, not which he can afford to have, but which he can afford to lose.
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Proverbs accordingly are somewhat analogous to those medical Formulas which, being in frequent use, are kept ready-made-up in the chemists’ shops, and which often save the framing of a distinct Prescription.
Richard Whately
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The heathen mythology not only was not true, but was not even supported as true it not only deserved no faith, but it demanded none. The very pretension to truth, the very demand of faith, were characteristic distinctions of Christianity.
Richard Whately
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Of all hostile feelings, envy is perhaps the hardest to be subdued, because hardly any one owns it even to himself, but looks out for one pretext after another to justify his hostility.
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As a science, logic institutes an analysis of the process of the mind in reasoning, and investigating the principles on which argumentation is conducted as an art, it furnishes such rules as may be derived from those principles, for guarding against erroneous deductions.
Richard Whately
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Eloquence is relative. One can no more pronounce on the eloquence of any composition than the wholesomeness of a medicine, without knowing for whom it is intended.
Richard Whately
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It is folly to expect men to do all that they may reasonably be expected to do.
Richard Whately
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Every instance of a man's suffering the penalty of the law is an instance of the failure of that penalty in effecting its purpose, which is to deter.
Richard Whately