On Relying on Laws and Locks – September 07, 1958
In many ways we take great pains to protect our property and to safeguard ourselves. We pass many laws, and we make many locks.
But after all other considerations are taken into account and given their proper appraisal, we had just as well, first and always, face this fact: There is no such thing as being permanently safe simply with laws or with locks. The only things we can count on ultimately are honesty, integrity, and high qualities of character.
No lock was ever made that gives full and lasting protection against a cunning and determined dishonesty—because the same kind of brains that can make a so-called safe lock can also unlock a so-called safe lock.
The same kind of brains that can make a code can break a code. The same kind of mind that can devise a so-called “foolproof” system, can outsmart a so-called “foolproof” system.
Laws and locks retard dishonest people, but they don’t stop dishonesty. Only honesty can stop dishonesty—only integrity, only high qualities of character. And whenever we have to put ourselves in someone else’s bands, as we often do, whenever we have to trust other people in any occupation, in any profession, in any relationship in life, we should look beyond skill, beyond talent, beyond personality, beyond appearance, beyond ability—even beyond all these (but including them also if we can) we should look for high qualities of character. And if we can’t count on character, there is very little we can count on.
No man has reason to sleep very well if his whole trust is placed in laws and locks and alarms, for people have proved repeatedly, with boldness and craftiness and quiet cunning, that they can invade the most safely guarded places, that they can perpetrate repeated frauds upon the public, that they can circumvent accounting systems, audits and rules and regulations. And with more laws and locks than we have ever had before, with more men checking on other men, with more and more people policing other people, there is more and ever more violation of laws and of locks.
Too often, in too many places, too many of us have too much put our trust in mere physical factors and have too much forgotten the inner make-up of the man. But when we have found high qualities of character, someone without evil intent, someone who knows the difference between what is his and what isn’t, what is honorable and what isn’t, when we have found someone to trust, we have found one of life’s greatest safeguards and satisfactions. *
*Revised
September 07, 1958
Broadcast Number 1,516