verified
Honesty is the best policy - when there is money in it.
Verified
Confirmed by our editorial team.
We traced this quote to a primary published source and confirmed the words are genuinely the author's. You can cite it with confidence.
Source
“Business,” speech to Eastman College alumni banquet, March 30, 1901; collected in Mark Twain’s Speeches.
Editorial Note
We traced this line directly to Mark Twain’s speech “Business,” delivered at the Eastman College alumni banquet on March 30, 1901. In the speech, Twain responds to James G. Cannon’s stated rules of business success — “diligence, honesty, and truthfulness” — with the line: “Honesty is the best policy—when there is money in it.” The wording matches the queried quote apart from trivial punctuation differences, and it appears in a collected volume of Twain’s own speeches under a specific title, date, and occasion. We found no credible competing author or documented earlier origin for this exact sentence. The evidence rests on a specific, attributable Twain source rather than popular repetition. This quote is verified.
