Too little
Convenient exemption
The limit was meant for ordinary entries, not this one.
The principle disappears at the first flattering exception.
Integrity
The rule was excellent until your own windmill grew past it.
Consistency between considered ethical convictions and deliberate action.
Integrity keeps a considered principle active when abandoning it would make you look more capable, popular or successful. In a self-directed life, the standard you endorse must be able to inconvenience you. That consistency gives your choices a shape beyond whatever wins this afternoon. You can change a mistaken principle for a good reason; you cannot quietly exempt yourself and still call it your principle.
Integrity gives a principle that survives personal disadvantage
For a small craft display, you argued that every entry should fit the same square space so everyone gets a fair share of the table. Your paper windmill is magnificent. It also has a blade outside the measuring frame. A friend offers a rosette anyway. You put it back and decide whether to shorten the blade or enter another day. The windmill has enough reach to power several explanations, but none would make the agreed space larger.
Finding the balance in Integrity
An illustrative everyday situation
Apply the same display-size standard to your own oversized craft entry, returning an offered rosette rather than taking a private exception.
A fitting response
A standard you share
Mine is too wide as well. I will change it or leave it out.
You accept the consequence of a principle you have reason to uphold.
Pursued too far
Loyalty to a mistake
We must keep the limit even if the display arrangements change.
Past agreement replaces judgment about what the principle was meant to protect.
A principle has become yours when it can overrule your advantage.
When the situation changes
The organizers find a larger table and offer the same larger space to everyone. You can reconsider the limit openly. Integrity preserves the reason for equal treatment; it does not require devotion to a particular piece of wood.
What Integrity makes possible
Others can understand what you stand for, and you can make decisions without inventing a new standard for each audience. Integrity also allows an honest account of defeat: you did not get the result you wanted, and you did not buy it by abandoning the reason you gave. That is something firmer than a flattering appearance.
Integrity in ordinary life
An inconvenient fact
A fact weakens the argument you favor. Include it and revise the argument rather than defending a standard of evidence that applies only to opponents.
A less impressive account
You value giving credit for work. Name a collaborator’s contribution even when the simpler story would make your own skill look remarkable.
Nearby virtues, different work
Honesty
Honesty represents the entry and its size truthfully. Integrity carries the acknowledged standard into the decision, even when the reward is within reach.
Discernment
Discernment tests a principle and its application. Integrity keeps a principle you still judge sound from dissolving under pressure.
Integrity and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Exceptional independence
“My rules are my own” is a counterfeit of Integrity when it means that only other people must honor the standard. A considered principle applies to your interests too.
Counterfeit: Foolish consistency
Defending a view merely because you once announced it can resemble Integrity. Genuine Integrity permits correction when the reasons change.
How to cultivate Integrity
Name a principle you actually use, and why it matters.
Notice where your own advantage makes an exception suddenly attractive.
Apply the principle or revise it openly for reasons that also make sense beyond your own case.
Try it today
In one ordinary decision, apply a standard you would expect someone else to meet. It may mean correcting your own claim or accepting a smaller share of credit. If the standard itself is mistaken, explain the revision instead of making a private exception.
On your own terms
Keep a considered principle when abandoning it would win approval.
Questions worth returning to
Would I still defend this standard if it cost me the result?
Am I revising my judgment, or protecting my image?
Keep the practice proportionate
Integrity does not require keeping a harmful or coerced agreement, disclosing private information or confronting someone who threatens you. A principle needs ethical judgment as well as consistency.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
nothing was useful which was not honest.
Franklin recalls his father’s response after boys took stones for their own project. A useful result did not excuse the means used to obtain it. The standard applies even when it spoils a proud achievement.
Every emendation of Anne’s had been on the side of honesty against importance.
Jane Austen · Persuasion · CHAPTER II. · English original, 1818 · excerpt
The narrator describes Anne’s proposed household economies. She gives actual obligations priority over the family’s appearance of importance; returning the ribbon makes a similarly unglamorous choice.
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Essays · Self-Reliance · Edna H. L. Turpin edition, 1907 · excerpt
Emerson urges the reader to examine inherited authority and speak from considered conviction. His surrounding claims are more absolute; here, owning a principle includes applying it when it costs you a flattering result.
The acts of an individual may be hurtful to others, or wanting in due consideration for their welfare, without going the length of violating any of their constituted rights.
Mill distinguishes considerate conduct from the minimum enforced by rights. Honoring the space agreed for everyone gives a chosen principle practical force even when nobody would punish an exception.
For this reason philosophers admonish us not to be satisfied with learning only, but also to add study, and then practice.
Epictetus asks that professed ideas enter conduct. Naming a principle is incomplete until it informs the inconvenient next step.
We keep up appearances, too often at the expense of honesty; and, though we may not be rich, yet we must seem to be so.
Samuel Smiles · Self-Help · Chapter X, Money—Its Use and Abuse · 1897 edition · excerpt
Smiles criticizes the cost of looking successful. Returning an undeserved ribbon allows the actual achievement to stand without an inflated appearance. His broader claims about poverty are not adopted.
For these are my own particular opinions and fancies, and I deliver them as only what I myself believe, and not for what is to be believed by others.
Montaigne owns his judgments without imposing them as universal authority. A chosen principle calls you to account for your conduct; it does not make everyone else your subject.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the fourteen-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. A small choice can give you something useful to practice.