96 Loyalty Quotes That Will Help Build Honesty and Trust
Updated: May 17, 2023
Whether to your family, your friends, or even yourself, loyalty is crucial to sustaining strong relationships. These quotes stress the importance and value of this vital trait.
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Loyalty is a very important part of meaningful relationships—it’s a strong foundation for trust, honesty, and caring. Your loyalty, when it’s earned, is one of the most valuable things you can give someone. It’s also important to note that loyalty is a two-way street and you should give and expect loyalty in equal measure! Loyalty takes teamwork—and we just so happen to have teamwork quotes as well. It’s also an important quality in a leader, which these leadership quotes reinforce. These loyalty quotes will inspire you to practice loyalty and also stand by what it really means—and how loyalty is important to relationships with friends, family, romantic partners, your craft, and even yourself. We’ve got some self-love quotes to further develop that last crucial relationship! And for more inspiring words of wisdom, read these strength quotes that’ll inspire you even in the hard times.
1. “I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me—they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could.” —Veronica Roth, author
2. “It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.” —Marlene Dietrich, singer and actress
3. “No more important duty can be urged upon those who are entering the great theater of life than simple loyalty to their best convictions.” —Edwin Hubbell Chapin, preacher and poet
4. “Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” —J.R.R. Tolkien, author
Speaking of farewells, here are some farewell messages to send your co-workers.
5. “Reliability is a most wonderful virtue. We should cultivate it. We should be consistent about the things we do, so that others will know they can count on us. But more important, we want to be able to count on ourselves. The greatest pain is to have to disappoint one’s self.” —Sterling W. Sill, Mormon leader
6. “Nothing is more noble, nothing more venerable, than loyalty.” —Cicero, Roman scholar and philosopher
7. “Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true, but you and I know what this world can do. So let’s make our steps clear so the other may see. And I’ll wait for you…should I fall behind wait for me.” —
8. “Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.” —Ann Landers, advice columnist
9. “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm & constant.” —Socrates, Greek philosopher
10. “Loyalty is a continuous phenomenon; you don’t score points for past action.” —Natasha Pulley, author
11. “Leadership is a two-way street, loyalty up and loyalty down.” —Grace Hopper, computer scientist. Here are more great leadership quotes that’ll help you realize your potential.
12. “Loyalty…When I think of it, I wonder if I would rather have it than love. Whereas love is often an over-used word and an unpredictable feeling, the other is nothing but dependability.” —Donna Lynn Hope, author
13. “You don’t earn loyalty in a day. You earn loyalty day by day.” —Jeffrey Gitomer, author and business trainer
14. “Be loyal and trustworthy. Do not befriend anyone who is lower than yourself in this regard.” —Confucius, Chinese philosopher
15. “Anything is possible when you have the right people there to support you.” —Misty Copeland, classical ballet dancer
16. “The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.” —Mario Puzo, author and journalist. That seems to be the consensus when it comes to family loyalty quotes!
17. “Loyalty is a characteristic trait. Those who have it, give it free of charge.” —Ellen J. Barrier, author
18. “We are sure to get opportunities as we show ourselves capable of being trusted.” —Roy L. Smith, clergyman and author
19. “When confronted with a challenge, the committed heart will search for a solution. The undecided heart searches for an escape.” —Andy Andrews, author and speaker
20. “Loyalty cannot be blueprinted. It cannot be produced on an assembly line. In fact, it cannot be manufactured at all, for its origin is the human heart — the center of self-respect and human dignity. It is a force which leaps into being only when conditions are exactly right for it — and it is a force very sensitive to betrayal.” —Maurice Franks, attorney and author
21. “The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love, and loyalty.” —Zig Ziglar, personal development trainer and speaker. Read these other success quotes to aspire to greatness.
22. “Loyalty is what makes us trust, Trust is what makes us stay, Staying is what makes us love, and love is what gives us hope.” —Glenn van Dekken, professor
23. “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” —William Shakespeare, playwright
24. “I look for these qualities and characteristics in people. Honesty is number one, respect, and absolutely the third would have to be loyalty.” —Summer Altice, actress and model
25. “The only people I owe my loyalty to are those who never made me question theirs.” —Anonymous
26. “It is better to be faithful than famous.” —Theodore Roosevelt, former U.S. president
27. “Sometimes it was worth all the disadvantages of marriage just to have that: one friend in an indifferent world.” —Erica Jong, author and poet. Here are more friendship quotes you’ll want to share with your bestie.
28. “Confidentiality is a virtue of the loyal, as loyalty is the virtue of faithfulness.” —Edwin Louis Cole, religious leader
29. “If you have three people in your life that you can trust, you can consider yourself the luckiest person in the whole world.” —Selena Gomez, singer and actress
30. “You cannot buy loyalty. You cannot buy the devotion of hearts, minds, and souls. You have to earn these things.” —Clarence Francis, businessman
31. “Love is a decision, not just an emotion. It is selfless, and a commitment.” —Lydia McLaughlin, businesswoman
32. “Be loyal to those who are not present. In doing so, you build the trust of those who are present.” —Stephen Covey, author and businessman
33. “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.” —W. H. Murray, mountaineer and writer
34. “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” —Arnold H. Glasgow, businessman
35. “…it isn’t things and proximity, or even blood that holds us all together. What makes a family is love and loyalty.” —Genevieve Dewey, author, in Third Time’s the Charm
36. “A man is not an orange. You can’t eat the fruit and throw the peel away.” —Arthur Miller, playwright, in Death of a Salesman
37. “A healthy loyalty is not passive and complacent, but active and critical.” —Harold Laski, political theorist
38. “Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.” —Marcus Aurelius Antonius, Roman emperor
39. “True loyalty is proven not proclaimed.” —Craig Groeschel, pastor and author
40. “Ability is important in our quest for success, but dependability is critical.” —Zig Ziglar. Read these other success quotes that’ll help you reach your goals.
41. “My whole thing is loyalty. Loyalty over royalty; word is bond.” —Fetty Wap, rapper
42. “Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.” —Samuel Butler, novelist
43. “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” —Oprah Winfrey, talk show host and producer. Friendship and loyalty quotes say it all!
44. “So much of what is best in us is bound up in our love of family, that it remains the measure of our stability because it measures our sense of loyalty.” —Haniel Long, poet
45. “If we commit ourselves to one person for life, this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather, it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession but participation.” —
46. “Loyalty is my motto. When I give my word, you can trust me.” —Philippa Gregory, author
47. “Sometimes we’re loyal to more than one thing. When there’s a conflict, we have to choose which loyalty to honor.” —Claudia Gray, author
48. “The only way to have a friend is to be one.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer
49. “I’ll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.” —Samuel Goldwyn, movie producer
50. “Loyalty is the pledge of truth to oneself and others.” —Ada Velez-Boardley, social worker
51. “If put to the pinch, an ounce of loyalty is worth a pound of cleverness.” —Elbert Hubbard, writer and philosopher
52. “Without loyalty there can be no love. Without loyalty, there can be no family. Without loyalty, there can be no friendship. Without loyalty, there can be no commitment to community or country.” —Eric Felten, author and ethicist
53. “Loyalty is a 24-hour proposition, 24/7. It’s not a part-time job.” —Jonathan Moyo, Zimbabwean politician
54. “As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.” —Margaret Atwood, author
55. “Unless you can find some sort of loyalty, you cannot find unity and peace in your active living.” —Josiah Royce, philosopher
56. “The greater the loyalty of a group toward the group, the greater is the motivation among the members to achieve the goals of the group, and the greater the probability that the group will achieve its goals.” —Rensis Likert, psychologist
57. “What I value most in my friends is loyalty.” —David Mamet, director and playwright
58. “Trust is a big word for me. Loyalty and trust, for me, are everything. It’s the core of what I’m about and what the people around me hopefully are about. It’s a certain thing that gives you a sense of security.” —Tommy Mottola, music producer
59. “Loyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antidote for creeping despair.” —Dean Koontz, author
60. “The scholar does not consider gold and jade to be precious treasures, but loyalty and good faith.” —Confucius
61. “I don’t like to give up on people when they need someone not to give up on them.” —Carrol Bryant, author
62. “The truest form of love is how you behave toward someone, not how you feel about them.” —
63. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” —Martin Luther King, Jr., reverend, orator, and activist
64. “Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved.” —Martin Luther, theologist and monk
65. “[My mom told me] to always be loyal and treat someone how you want to be treated. Find someone that you can love and that’s going to be your best friend.” —Paris Hilton, socialite and entrepreneur
66. “I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.” —Helen Keller, author and activist
67. “Very often the test of one’s allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience.” —Christopher Hitchens, political critic and author
68. “The whole point of loyalty was not to change: stick with those who stuck with you.” —Larry McMurtry, author. After you’ve read these trust and loyalty quotes, check out our favorite confidence quotes.
69. “Your truest friends are the ones who will stand by you in your darkest moments—because they’re willing to brave the shadows with you—and in your greatest moments—because they’re not afraid to let you shine.” —Nicole Yatsonsky, actress and writer
70. “I have a loyalty that runs in my bloodstream, when I lock into someone or something, you can’t get me away from it because I commit that thoroughly. That’s in friendship, that’s a deal, that’s a commitment….If you shake my hand, that’s for life.” —Jerry Lewis, comedian and filmmaker
71. “When you see couples in long-term relationships and you see them go through good times and bad times, you realize it’s about being committed enough and loving your partner enough to hang in there regardless.” —Candace Cameron Bure, actress and producer
72. “There’s nothing like a really loyal, dependable, good friend. Nothing.” —Jennifer Aniston, actress
73. “I think a good friend, to me, is all about trust and loyalty. You don’t ever want to second-guess whether you can tell your friend something.”
74. “The relationship between commitment and doubt is by no means an antagonistic one. Commitment is healthiest when it is not without doubt, but in spite of doubt.” —Rollo May, psychologist and author
75. “Within the hearts of men, loyalty and consideration are esteemed greater than success.” —Bryant H. McGill, author and entrepreneur
76. “If you can’t value a commitment made by someone else, your own commitments lose their value too.” —
77. “The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.” —Albert Schweitzer, polymath and theologian
78. “We have to recognize that there cannot be relationships unless there is commitment, unless there is loyalty, unless there is love, patience, persistence.” —Cornel West, philosopher and activist. In addition to these relationship loyalty quotes, read these other inspiring relationship quotes.
79. “Employee loyalty begins with employer loyalty. Your employees should know that if they do the job they were hired to do with a reasonable amount of competence and efficiency, you will support them.” —Harvey Mackay, businessman and author
80. “Real love has little to do with falling. It’s a climb up the rocky face of a mountain, hard work, and most people are too selfish or too scared to bother. Very few reach the critical point in their relationship that summons the attention of the light and the dark, that place where they will make a commitment to love no matter what obstacles-or temptations- appear in their path.” —
81. “Those who don’t know the value of loyalty can never appreciate the cost of betrayal.” —Anonymous
82. “If by my life or death I can protect you, I will.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
83. “A person who deserves my loyalty receives it.” —Joyce Maynard, author and journalist
84. “Love is not maximum emotion. Love is maximum commitment.” —Sinclair Ferguson, theologian
85. “Loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I’ll like it or not.” —General Colin Powell , former U.S. Secretary of State
86. “Where there is loyalty, weapons are of no use.” —Paulo Coelho, author
87. “And the strongest trust is built by the smallest actions, the keeping of the little promises. It is the constant truthfulness, the continued dependability, the remembrance of minor things, which most inspire confidence and faith.” —Walter Wangerin Jr., author and educator
89. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.” —Jane Austen, author
90. “Our modern, rootless times do seem to be a particularly inhospitable environment for loyalty. We come and go so relentlessly that our friendships can’t but come and go too. What sort of loyalty is there in the age of Facebook, when friendship is a costless transaction, a business of flip reciprocity…. Friendship held together by nothing more permanent than hyperlinks is hardly the stuff of selfless fidelity.” —Eric Felten
91. “As I’m getting older, I’m really learning unconditional love and loyalty are extremely important.” —Bindi Irwin, conservationist and activist
92. “I place an enormous premium on loyalty. If someone betrays me, I can forgive them rationally, but emotionally I have found it impossible to do so.” —Richard E. Grant, actor
93. “Without commitment, you cannot have depth in anything, whether it’s a relationship, a business or a hobby.” —
94. “We are all in the same boat, in a stormy sea, and we owe each other a terrible loyalty.” —G.K. Chesterton, writer and philosopher
95. “A friend is someone who walks into a room when everyone else is walking out.” —Gary W. Moore, author
96. “Loyalty and friendship, which is to me the same, created all the wealth that I’ve ever thought I’d have.” —Ernie Banks, pro baseball player. Next, read these sports quotes for success on the field and in life.
