How Can You Determine Your Integrity?

January 25, 2008 by Stephen Palmer 

Anyone can display integrity in public, when many others view what they do and say. However, the ultimate measure of a person’s integrity is how they act when they are absolutely alone, and what they do when no one else will ever know.

It is the quiet moments spent in solitude that determine if you are true to what you say you believe in. Private virtue is not a function of what others think of you; it is a function of what you do regardless of what others around you think or do.

Through private virtue, we become anchored upon the core truths that determine both our individual characters, as well as the shape of our civilization. In the absence of private virtue, we are left with nothing but legality to protect us from each other, which legality soon becomes obsolete, favoritist, and an instrument of tyranny as the people degenerate.

How every individual lives their life privately determines our success or failure as a nation. What are you contributing to civilization when no one is around to see?

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Suggested Reading: A World Split Apart by Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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