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 around 1600 and thereafter in the works of a host of writers including Cervantes, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Mark Twain and too many others to mention.