The Importance of Principles – Sunday, September 7, 1952
Perhaps it would not be amiss again to remind ourselves that every man should have a set of sound principles to which he can turn when any proposal is presented to him.
When a person has a sound and acceptable set of principles, the everyday decisions of life are much less difficult. In some respects, perhaps, the problem could be compared to the procedure on a playing field: If a referee knows the rules, if he knows the principle that covers each play, he can immediately settle each situation. But if he doesn’t know, or if he doesn’t definitely decide, or if for any reason he departs from the rules of play, he finds himself in an embarrassing and untenable situation.
Expediency sometimes persuades people to meet pressing problems by compromising principles. But the part we sometimes forget is this: When once we have compromised a correct principle for any purpose, however justified it may seem at the moment, we are thereafter embarrassed by it. We and others can always look back and see that one exception was made, and if one was made, why not another?
No matter what the pressure, no matter what the advantages, no matter who the personalities, it is always unfortunate when any person moves beyond the bounds of ethics or honor or honesty. It is always unfortunate when a person’s principles become too flexible to be trusted, when a person is persuaded to step just a bit beyond safe bounds—for if he takes one step beyond bounds, why can’t he take two? And if he takes two, where can he stop?
The fact is that when a person has once stepped beyond the bounds, he had made the next stopping point difficult to determine. And this is where basic virtues and proved principles play an indispensable part: They establish the point beyond which one knows he cannot safely proceed.
Life can be simpler, safer, and more satisfying if a person has a sound set of principles from which no preferment or profit or persuasion could induce him to depart.
“The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, September 7,1952, 11:00 to 11:30 a.m., Eastern Time. Copyright, 1952
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September 7, 1952
Broadcast Number 1,203