Honesty is the best policy.

The proverb says that telling the truth and dealing fairly pay in the long run: a reputation for honesty is worth more than any single gain from a lie. It is offered to children and businesses alike, and its charm and its weakness are the same, for it recommends honesty as a policy, a prudent course, rather than as a duty. The nineteenth-century Archbishop Richard Whately drew the conclusion: whoever is honest because it is the best policy is not an honest man.

The saying has been in use in English for some four centuries. George Washington gave it public weight in his Farewell Address of 1796, where he held the maxim “no less applicable to public than to private affairs”. It has served since in sermons, school mottoes and company values.

Close equivalents exist in many languages, often with the same commercial undertone: French “l’honnêteté est la meilleure politique” and Spanish “la honradez es la mejor política” are straight translations. The proverb assumes that the world eventually finds liars out, its optimistic premise.

English proverb