honesty is the best policy

Etymology
Attested since the early 1600s. had the meaning of ‘shrewdness, cunning’ and ‘trick, stratagem’ at the time, so that the saying was originally an oxymoron in the same vein as.

Proverb

 * 1) Honesty is preferable as a course of action because it tends to work out best in the end.
 * , reprinted 1673,, Europae Speculum; Or A View Or Survey of the State of Religion in the Western Parts of the World, page 112:
 * All theſe things conſidered, it hath made me to mitigate my former imagination, and to deem it not unpoſſible, that this over-politick and too wiſe Order may reach a note higher than our groſs conceits, who think honeſty the beſt policy, and truth the onely durable armor of proof; […]
 * 1) * 1842, published 1843, anonymous, “Precepts and Proverbs” in The Common School Journal, volume 5, number 24, page 383:
 * Honesty is the best policy; but he who acts on that principle is not an honest man. He only is an honest man who does that which is right because it is right, and not from motives of policy; and then, he is rewarded by finding afterwards that the honest course he has pursued was in reality the most politic.

Translations

 * Chinese: 诚实为上策
 * Dutch: eerlijk duurt het langst
 * Finnish: rehellisyys maan perii
 * French: l'honnêteté paie
 * German: ehrlich währt am längsten, Ehrlichkeit ist die beste Politik
 * Japanese: 正直は最高の政策です
 * Korean: 정직은 최선의 정책이다
 * Polish: uczciwość popłaca
 * Portuguese: honestidade é a melhor política
 * Spanish: honestidad es la mejor política
 * Swedish: ärligheten varar längst