Honesty is the best policy

Certainly, the idea or concept at the root of this maxim is very ancient, which has prompted some etymologists to give the source as Aesop’s Fables (c.550 BC) specifically Mercury and the Woodcutter, where an honest woodcutter loses his axe in the river. When Mercury retrieves a golden axe from the water and asks the woodcutter if it is his axe, the honest woodcutter says no. Mercury rewards the man’s honesty with both the axe he lost and the golden one. Hence, honesty is the best policy. The same concept also appears in several Roman (Latin) texts. It first appears in English in 1599 when Sir Edwin Sandys wrote, 'honestie, the best policie.' Sandys was one of the founders of the Virginia Company of London, which in 1606 established the colony of Virginia at Jamestown in America. Thereafter, it appears in the written works of a host of others including Cervantes, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Mark Twain and too many more to mention.