Personal Integrity Quotes

I do not want to give my power, my self-esteem, or my autonomy, to any person, place, or thing outside myself. [ ... ] The only thing that matters is how I feel about myself, my personal integrity, and my relationship with my Creator. ~ Ashley Judd

Being able to tell the truth about our own lack of personal integrity has integrity to it. The key to being able to deal with and lighten up about our own humanity is to get wholly honest about our dishonesty. ~ Lauren Handel Zander

You have to have a habitual vision of greatness ... you have to believe in fact that you will refuse to settle for mediocrity. You won't confuse your financial security with your personal integrity, you won't confuse your success with your greatness or your prosperity with your magnanimity ... believe in fact that living is connected to giving. ~ Cornel West

Men and women of integrity understand intrinsically that theirs is the precious right to hold their heads in the sunlight of truth, unashamed before anyone. Embodied within this simple principle and character trait rests the foundational virtue of every person and of every society. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

It has become dramatically clear that the foundation of corporate integrity is personal integrity. ~ Samuel DiPiazza

The degree to which we have developed our independent will in our everyday lives is measured by our personal integrity. Integrity is, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves. It's our ability to make and keep commitments to ourselves, to "walk our talk." It's honor with self, a fundamental part of the Character Ethic, the essence of proactive growth. ~ Stephen R. Covey

For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air: your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine
what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come? ~ Frederick William Robertson

Integrity is at the heart of commerce in the world in which we live. Honesty and integrity comprise the very underpinnings of society ... Indeed, the strength and safety of any organization-including the family-lie in the integrity of its members. Without personal integrity, there can be no confidence. Without confidence, there can be no prospect of permanent success. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

People whose lives are not balanced by a healthy love of money suffer from an appalling obsession with personal integrity. ~ Diane Setterfield

High SQ demands the most intense personal integrity. It demands that we stand open to experience, that we recapture our ability to see life and others afresh, as though through the eyes of a child, to learn how to tap into our intuition and visualization, as a powerful means of using our inner knowing to "make a difference." It demands that we cease to seek refuge in what we know and constantly explore and learn from what we do not know. It demands that we live the questions rather than the answers. ~ Danah Zohar

You're a prickly, stubborn, spirited woman."
"Don't forget crude, rude, and vulgar."
"Only when it suits you. You're sly when occasion calls for it, direct to the point of forgetting tact even exists, sarcastic, fierce, I did mention stubborn, didn't I?"
"Yes," she said dryly.
"You're also smart, kind, gentle, beautiful, and always cling to your personal integrity, even when it's in your best interests to abandon it." A little warm feeling spread through her chest, and even her natural suspicion that he was lying couldn't quite extinguish it. Where was he going with this? "You're also quite funny," he said.
"Oh, I amuse you?" He gave her one of his devastating, slightly wicked smiles.
"You have no idea." Arrogant ass.
"And all of that means what?"
"Just that I mean to have you." She frowned at him. "I mean to have you, Rose, you and all of your thorns. I'm a disagreeable and stubborn bastard, but I'm not a fool. You didn't really expect me to pass you up, did you? ~ Ilona Andrews

For an immeasurable period of time, hours, days, weeks, it seemed, Celia had been struggling against tides of anguish, sinking deeper and deeper into a dreadful sea, whose waves broke at ever shorter intervals until at last there was no respite, but an endless torment that drowned and broke and shattered her to nothing. There was no longer any such person as Celia Bryant in the living world. All that remained was an anonymous hulk, a bleeding rag of flesh in a universe of pain. Her brain had long ago ceased to function. Only somewhere, at the centre of torture, an inexorable core of consciousness persisted.

Hours ago, years ago, she had thought: 'This is too much. No one could bear such agony and go on living.' It seemed that something in her must break; that she must either die or fall into oblivion. Yet somehow she had gone on bearing everything. She had not died. She had not lost consciousness. All that she had lost was the sense of her personal integrity. As a human being she was obliterated; her mind was dispersed. she could not any longer envisage an end of torment. 'Not only not to hope:not even to wait. Just to endure.'

At last, in some region utterly remote, a new thing came into being, words were spoken, and strangely, incredibly, the words had significance. That which had once been Celia could not grasp their meaning because somewhere else a woman's voice was crying out lamentably. Nevertheless, she heard a man speaking, and with a new sea ~ Anna Kavan

Let us never lose sight of the fact that education is a preparation for life - and that preparing for life is far more than knowing how to make a living or how to land on the moon. Preparing for life means building personal integrity, developing a sound sense of values, increasing the capacity and willingness to serve. Education must have its roots in moral principles. If we lose sight of that fact in our attempt to match our educational system against that of the materialists, we shall have lost far more than we could possibly gain. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

In my career, I learned that giving your services for free gives you a good return on your investment, not just financially but morally. It supplements your personal integrity. ~ Stevie Wonder

When the entire moral energy of an individual goes into the cultivation of personal integrity, we all know how unlovely the result may become; the character is upright, of course, but too coated over with the result of its own endeavor to be attractive. ~ Jane Addams

When you make an absolute statement, you assume a sense of personal integrity based on a pretense of moral objectivity, which exists only as a faulty heuristic to arrive at an easy conclusion, and deny yourself the responsibility of choice - it's more convenient not to acknowledge your freedom and settle for a less desirable outcome on the grounds that you had no choice, rather than risk acquiring the less desirable outcome by your own will, regardless of the possibility for a better one. ~ Drew Lerman

If all the world spoke, acted, or kept silence with intent to deceive,
if dearest interests were at stake, and dearest lives in peril,
if no one should ever know of her truth or her falsehood to measure out their honour or contempt for her by, straight alone where she stood, in the presence of God, she prayed that she might have strength to speak and act the truth for evermore. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Society and personal integrity erode one small sin at a time. The most dangerous things are the little "inconsequential" slips that we let slide every day. ~ Genieve Dawkins

Without self-discipline, a noncommissioned officer can never develop or maintain personal integrity. ~ Silas L. Copeland

There is nothing, nothing, nothing more important to me in the men and women I train than their absolute personal integrity. ~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Say only what you mean. ~ Miguel Ruiz

James Stewart was so kind and considerate and had such personal integrity. ~ Brigitte Bardot

To many an upright poor person, it seems needless to invent a god who will wash the feet of beggars and exalt those who do not care to labor. What is this but a denial of thrift and a sickly obsession with the victim? The so-called common people are quite able to penetrate this ruse ("The good lord must indeed love the poor, since he made so many of them"). Many decent people are made uneasy by the constant injunction to give alms and to dwell among those who have lost their self-respect. They can also see the hook sticking out of the bait: abandon this useless life, leave your family, and follow the prophet who says that the world is soon to pass away. Such an injunction coupled with an implicit or explicit "or else" is repulsive to many conservatives who believe in self-reliance and personal integrity, and who distrust "charity," just as it was repulsive to the early socialists who did not think that poverty was an ideal or romantic or ennobled state. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Six essential qualities that are the key to success: Sincerity, personal integrity, humility, courtesy, wisdom, charity. ~ William C. Menninger

I always thought Obama was "presidential." He treated the office of the presidency with respect. I rarely saw him in the Oval Office with a coat and tie, and he always conducted himself with dignity. He was a man of personal integrity, and in his personal behavior - at least to the extent I could observe it - he was an excellent role model...I thought Obama was first-rate in both intellect and temperament." Page 300 ~ Robert M. Gates

Ultimately, any system, any set of laws or procedures, can only be as effective as the individuals responsible for its implementation. If, owing to failures of personal integrity, a good system is misused, it can easily become a source of harm rather than a source of benefit. This is a general truth which applies to all fields of human activity, ~ Dalai Lama XIV

The terrible thing is that one cannot be a Communist and not let oneself in for the shameful act of recantation. One cannot be a Communist and preserve an iota of one's personal integrity. ~ Milovan Djilas

For me, my family and my faith have been what's really been my anchor, and grounding me, and helping me navigate through a lot of the things that really destroy marriages in Hollywood, and in your own personal integrity. ~ Kirk Cameron

Testimony in new age writing affirms the way in which embracing a love ethic transforms life for the good. Yet a lot of this information only reaches those of us who have class privilege. And often, individuals whose lives are rich in spiritual and material well-being, who have diverse friends from all walks of life who nurture their personal integrity, tell the rest of the world these things are impossible to come by. I am talking here about the many prophets of doom who tell us that racism will never end, sexism is here to stay the rich will never share their resources. We would all be surprised if we could enter their lives for a day. Much of what they are telling us cannot be had, they have. But in keeping with a capitalist-based notion of well-being, they really believe there is not enough to go around, that the good life can only be had by a few. ~ Bell Hooks

QUESTLOVE: How do you get that back? Does being downtrodden make us spiritual again?

WEST: I don't think it's just a matter of the material conditions; it's a matter of the choices that we make. Our ancestors could have chosen forms of spiritual suicide and spiritual blackout, but they decided not to, even in the midst of slavery, even in the midst of Jim Crow. Great-great grandma could have chosen to commit suicide. But she said no, her kids said no. The love said no. "I choose to be on the love train, even under slave-like conditions." That's a choice we make. All we have had as a people, historically - amid the levels of hatred, the social death of slavery, the civic death of Jim Crow, the psychological death of hating one's self, the spiritual death of giving up and selling out and caving in - all we have is a subversive memory, personal integrity, and courageous witness in the fight for justice. That's all we've got. You do away with the memory, and people can't hear the voice of a Glenn Jones or, my favorite, Gerald Levert. With no memory, you get very little artistic integrity, just a matter of stimulating people for the market, and then no creative witness. ~ Cornel West

The way men are seen in photography, in fashion, and the way that men look at pictures of themselves has changed in recent years. It is a subject that has come into focus: The masculine image, a man's personal style, changing attitudes to the male face and body, ~ Mario Testino

The world of "magick" is, nine times out of ten, a world where people can hide their deep-set insecurity and personal damage behind illusion, constructed identities and claims to privileged knowledge, power or spiritual status. A gaudy carnival magic show, conducted with props that have long since begun to disintegrate with age, that seems to function only to distract people from the real magic that is occurring all around them, in every facet of their lives, every day of their lives. While the rituals and magical techniques of the Temple seem overly simplistic in comparison with the loftier Qabalahs, tables of correspondences and secret formulae of "high" magick, they have one thing which high magick quite often forgets: a concrete function. ~ Jason Louv

So basically, it just really represents our band and we didn't even think about that when we decided to call it 'Warpaint'. And then through getting asked questions about "why is that song called 'Warpaint'?" - then we realised, "oh my god! THAT'S why!" And we didn't even know why ... but that's why! And then 'Shadows' is just ... I love that song and it's personal to me. I love how it turned out!! ~ Theresa Wayman

Fifty-four years of love and tenderness and crossness and devotion and unswerving loyalty. Without her I could have achieved a quarter of what I have achieved, not only in terms of success and career, but in terms of personal happiness. ~ Noel Coward

It is not a dream that someday, nations will be able to settle their difficulties without war, just as individuals now settle their personal feuds without resorting to arguments of physical strength or sharp steel. For, then, humanity will have created international jurisdiction and a power to enforce its laws. ~ Ellen Key

Until we can look at fear and accept it as the shadow of personal existence, as persons we are bound to be afraid. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Old Testament traces one complete cycle of that history, one people's rise and fall. This particular people is unique only in that they're the ones who begin to remember what man was made for. Moses' revelation at the burning bush is as profound as any religious scene in literature. There, he sees that the eternal creation and destruction of nature is not a mere process but the mask of a personal spirit, I AM THAT I AM. The centuries that follow that revelation are a spiraling semicircle of sin and shame and redemption, of freedom recovered and then surrendered in return for imperial greatness, of a striving toward righteousness through law that reveals only the impossibility of righteousness, of power and pride and fall. It's every people's history, in other words, but seen anew in the light of the fire of I AM. It ~ Andrew Klavan

Many people from many different walks of life have marriages that break up, and those are deeply personal, deeply painful but ultimately private matters. ~ Nicola Sturgeon

I'm uncomfortable when I'm comfortable. I have to start something new-in the agency or in my personal life-every two years or so. Taking risks gives me energy. I can't help it, it's my personality. I'd like to think it's not really a compulsion toward high risks, but the spirit of an entrepreneur. ~ Jay Chiat

I came to believe that God has reserved the office of elder for men, and I came to this conclusion not because of what my church taught or because of cultural trends but because of intense personal study of Scripture and the work of biblical scholars and linguists much wiser and more skilled than I. ~ Anonymous

There is nothing better in the whole world than to know you have set a goal and achieved it. ~ John Patrick Hickey

Each man's destiny is personal only insofar as it may happen to resemble what is already in his memory. ~ Eduardo Mallea

The visionary who is serving God ceases to live for personal ambitions, but rather for God's ambitions. ~ George Barna

There is a huge difference between writing a book, which is a private activity I engage in with myself, and wanting to engage in overly intimate personal conversations with strangers, which I pretty much never want to do. ~ Michelle Tea

I thought about how we all believed ourselves to be the hero of some personal epic, when in fact we were basically identical organisms colonizing a vast and windowless room. ~ John Green

A woman, who considers herself to be mature, has every right to insist certain respectful expectations be met by a man, but not if her behavior is consistently childish, selfish, foolish or disrespectful. Man and woman should strive to bring values to the table that are worthy of mutual honor. Mature men won't tolerate nonsense, but baby-boys will. ~ T.F. Hodge

Each of us have a choice to make. Will we choose to achieve our dreams or will we choose to allow others to use us to achieve their dreams. ~ John Patrick Hickey

She'd spent forever trying to find him something personal, settling on a miniature Albertosaurus covered in deep violet feathers. She knew it was silly, but it reminded her of the day they met, and in the card she thanked him for showing her what dinosaurs really looked like. ~ Shannon Messenger

First, it is largely unknown just how the Holy Spirit interacted with the author of an original Biblical manuscript- 'passive' vs. 'active' (I contend that it was both/and). Secondly, it is also widely unknown just what the 'process' involved in 'canonization' was. Additionally, I see little evidence of the injection of personal bias if any by the Biblical authors. ~ R. Alan Woods

Believe in the integrity and value of the jagged path. We don't always do the right thing on our way to rightness. ~ Cheryl Strayed

If you think of your bad behavior as a lifestyle choice, as in "being yourself" or "just being honest," you might be ignoring the cost to your personal energy. ~ Scott Adams

Honesty has a beautiful and refreshing simplicity about it. No ulterior motives. No hidden meanings. An absence of hypocrisy, duplicity, political games, and verbal superficiality. As honesty and real integrity characterize our lives, there will be no need to manipulate others. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

People accuse journalism of being too personal; but to me it has always seemed far too impersonal. It is charged with tearing away the veils from private life; but it seems to me to be always dropping diaphanous but blinding veils between men and men. The Yellow Press is abused for exposing facts which are private; I wish the Yellow Press did anything so valuable. It is exactly the decisive individual touches that it never gives; and a proof of this is that after one has met a man a million times in the newspapers it is always a complete shock and reversal to meet him in real life. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

For a nation to be truly transformed, there must be movements, civil societies, NGOs that are spread all across the land to educate people on the issues of Personal Responsibility. If a nation or rather active citizens of a nation could successfully launch such campaigns and a good percentage of the populace begin to live by the principles of Personal Responsibility, which is "don't blame others", think of what you can do to fix it. Such a nation would cross the huddle of civilization in a record time. ~ Sunday Adelaja

There's never been anything I didn't love that I didn't connect with on a personal level because, to some degree, I projected upon it. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

I expect the notions of personal freedom and representative government would appear radical to a slave of the corporate world." "A ~ Anthony Ryan

I carry thoughts of you like my own personal constellation. How far away you are, my dearest friend, but no farther than those fixed stars in my soul. ~ Lisa Kleypas

But you can't make war personal," I say, "or you'll never make the right decisions."
"And if you didn't make personal decisions, you wouldn't be a person. All war is personal somehow, isn't it? For somebody? Except it's usually hate."
"Lee - "
"I'm just saying how lucky he is to have someone love him so much they'd take on the whole world." His Noise is uncomfortable, wondering what I'm looking like, how I'm responding. "That's all I'm saying."
"He'd do it for me," I say quietly.
I'd do it for you too, Lee's Noise says.
And I know he would.
But those people who die because we do it, don't they have people who'd kill for them?
So who's right? ~ Patrick Ness

Today I am more convinced than ever. Conceptual integrity is central to product quality. Having a system architect is the most important single step toward conceptual integrity. These principles are by no means limited to software systems, but to the design of any complex construct, whether a computer, an airplane, a Strategic Defense Initiative, a Global Positioning System. After teaching a software engineering laboratory more than 20 times, I came to insist that student teams as small as four people choose a manager and a separate architect. Defining distinct roles in such small teams may be a little extreme, but I have observed it to work well and to contribute to design success even for small teams. ~ Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

Above all, by depriving people of the ability to satisfy personal needs in a
personal manner, radical monopoly creates radical scarcity of personal
as opposed to institutional-service. ~ Ivan Illich

See, the thing is I didn't think that that song would get much attention because it's such a personal song to me. I just wrote it about my childhood, and I didn't know how that would read on an album. But it's been everybody's favorite song. I didn't tell my mom. It was a total secret. So I wrote it in secret and then decided to record it secretly, so she had no idea that the song was recorded. My producers sent me the track and I synched it up to all my baby videos and I played it for her one Christmas Eve, and she bawled her eyes out. She didn't even think that it was my song. She didn't think there was any way for me to record a song without her knowing. ~ Taylor Swift

Automated call centers are only the most obvious way speech recognition will be used. The software is now becoming sophisticated enough to identify speakers through 'voiceprints,' akin to fingerprints, eventually reducing the need for personal identification numbers. ~ Alex Berenson

If you walk 100 miles into the life you don't want. Often, you must walk those same 100 miles to get out of that life. This is the answer to why the journey to fulfillment is often so difficult. However, if you can find a shortcut, a new path, you can get to the life you want much quicker. This is the premise of personal development, self-improvement and self-discovery..! ~ James A. Murphy

Wisdom consists in speaking and acting the truth. ~ Heraclitus