Quotes about Integrity

Jefferson Smith: I wouldn't give you two cents for all your fancy rules if, behind them, they didn't have a little bit of plain, ordinary, everyday kindness and a little looking out for the other fella, too.

- James Stewart (as Jefferson Smith) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Jefferson Smith: Well, what do you expect me to do? An honorary stooge like me against the Taylors and Paines and machines and lies?
Clarissa Saunders: Your friend, Mr. Lincoln had his Taylors and Paines. So did every other man who ever tried to lift his thought up off the ground. Odds against them didn't stop those men. They were fools that way. All the good that ever came into this world came from fools with faith like that. You know that, Jeff. You can't quit now. Not you. They aren't all Taylors and Paines in Washington. That kind just throw big shadows, that's all. You didn't just have faith in Paine or any other living man. You had faith in something bigger than that. You had plain, decent, everyday, common rightness, and this country could use some of that. Yeah, so could the whole cockeyed world, a lot of it. Remember the first day you got here? Remember what you said about Mr. Lincoln? You said he was sitting up there, waiting for someone to come along. You were right. He was waiting for a man who could see his job and sail into it, that's what he was waiting for. A man who could tear into the Taylors and root them out into the open. I think he was waiting for you, Jeff. He knows you can do it, so do I.

- Jean Arthur (as Clarissa Saunders) in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)

Lou Gehrig: People have to live their own lives. Nobody can live it for you. Nobody could have made a baseball player out of Uncle Otto, and nobody can make anything but a baseball player out of me.

- Gary Cooper (as Henry Louis 'Lou' Gehrig) in The Pride of the Yankees (1942)

Messala: You're either for me or against me! You have no other choice.
Judah Ben-Hur: If that is the choice, then I am against you.

- Charlton Heston (as Judah Ben) in Ben-Hur (1959)

Captain Renault: In 1935, you ran guns to Ethiopia. In 1936, you fought in Spain, on the Loyalist side.
Rick: I got well paid for it on both occasions.
Captain Renault: The winning side would have paid you much better.

- Claude Rains (as Captain Louis Renault) in Casablanca (1942)

Rick: Don't you sometimes wonder if it's worth all this? I mean what you're fighting for.
Victor Laszlo: You might as well question why we breathe. If we stop breathing, we'll die. If we stop fighting our enemies, the world will die.
Rick: Well, what of it? It'll be out of its misery.
Victor Laszlo: You know how you sound, Mr. Blaine? Like a man who's trying to convince himself of something he doesn't believe in his heart.

- Paul Henreid (as Victor Laszlo) in Casablanca (1942)

[Annina is contemplating Renault's offer of exit visas for sex]
Annina: Oh, monsieur, you are a man. If someone loved you very much, so that your happiness was the only thing that she wanted in the world, but she did a bad thing to make certain of it, could you forgive her?
Rick: Nobody ever loved me that much.
Annina: And he never knew, and the girl kept this bad thing locked in her heart? That would be all right, wouldn't it?
Rick: You want my advice?
Annina: Oh, yes, please.
Rick: Go back to Bulgaria.

- Humphrey Bogart (as Rick Blaine) in Casablanca (1942)

Tommy Green: Pop, what's that?
Phil Green: That's a statue of Atlas carrying the world on his shoulders.
Tommy Green: No kidding? That's what Grandma says you're doing. She says she wishes you'd leave the world alone once in a while.

- Dean Stockwell (as Tommy Green) in Gentleman's Agreement (1947)

Prince Feisal: You are an Englishman. Are you not loyal to England?
T.E. Lawrence: To England, and to other things.

- Peter O'Toole (as T.E. Lawrence) in Lawrence of Arabia (1962)

Eliza Doolittle: I ain't dirty! I washed my face and hands before I come, I did.

- Audrey Hepburn (as Eliza Doolittle) in My Fair Lady (1964)