The Spoken Word – Sunday, March 09, 1958
Last week we talked talent without character, without integrity, and of the need for moral responsibility in the use of all authority, all influence, and in every office and activity.
And today we should like to appeal to young people to keep the record of their lives clear and clean for any opportunity or opening that may ever be offered.
From the earliest years of youth, the record does matter—and it matters very much: the school record, the work record, the moral record, the record of all our conduct and acts and utterances and attitudes.
People constantly classify us. Our own acquaintances and companions classify us from the earliest age of remembrance. They know whether or not we are clean and honest or otherwise; willing or lazy; dependable or undependable—and they remember. And those who haven’t known us refer to the record when they have reason to, to see if we have the essentials for any trust or office or opportunity.
The essentials include, of course, technical qualifications. A lawyer needs to know the law. A doctor needs to know medicine and physical functioning. An accountant needs to know the principles of keeping accounts. Men need to be technically qualified for work entrusted to them—or able to become qualified.
But there are some other essentials of primary importance, including honor and honesty, integrity, dependability, willingness to work, and cleanliness and courage—the kind of courage that comes with good conscience. And these are not just words.
With a bad record or a bad conscience, it is difficult for a person to be at his best, difficult to be fully effective and efficient, because a bad conscience is always on the defensive. Talent and training are surely essential. But some other things are also at least equally essential to service and safety and effective living of life.
And may Heaven help the young to learn while, yet they are young, while yet the record is clear and clean, that the record of a man’s life lives with him, that the books are open every day, and that a person compromised is basically beset with something that impairs full confidence and courage, and full effectiveness.
One of the greatest needs of our time, and one of the most precious things for young people to preserve, is integrity, along with talent and technical training. Urgently and always, we need intelligence and integrity in all the public and private relationships of life.
March 09, 1958
Broadcast Number 1,490