Integrity--Without Side Considerations

The subject of integrity deserves consideration, and the words associated with it are reassuring: “… the quality of being complete…unbroken, unimpaired,” says the dictionary, “moral soundness, purity, honesty, freedom from corrupting influence of practice, strictness in the fulfillment of contracts … and in the discharge of trusts.”

Integrity is the quality that assures us that, as things seem to be, they are; that an endorsement of a product, for example, represents an honest judgment and not merely on opinion that is paid for.

Ina simple forthright sentence, George Washington said: “I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.” “Young Washington resolved to adhere absolutely to truth,” Wrote Douglas Southall Freeman,” to practice rigid honesty, to do his full duty, to put forth his largest effort, to maintain uniform courtesy and, above all, to deal justly.”

“An hones man is the noblest work of God,” said Alexander Pope. And Herbert Spencer added: “Not education, but character, is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard.”

And in this Washington left us an example of a quality of character we must have, if we are to preserve the heritage we have.

Surely one of the needs for our time is the need for integrity, for being true to trust, being assured that the facts can be seen from the top of the table. And this is not something that new laws or legislation will fix, or new rules of regulations, for ingenious men will always find ways to circumvent both laws and locks.

Integrity is simply something that a man is inside himself. It is, in a sense, the assurance that what one sees, that what something seems, that what should be of is said to be, is something that can be counted on, without side constrictions.