If it makes you ashamed, if you wouldn’t want to be seen, you’d dare not do it in public, if you leave it only for the night…what does that say?

If your profession doesn’t have a code of ethics? Make one. To not have one is a recipe for moral dilemmas, for slip-sliding, if only unintentionally, into gray areas. How could you possibly do right if you don’t know what right is?

That’s what Joan Didion said about self-respect—which is what integrity is rooted in. To be without it, she warned, “is to lie awake some night, beyond the reach of warm milk, phenobarbital, and the sleeping hand on the coverlet, counting up the sins of commission and omission, the trusts betrayed, the promises subtly broken, the gifts irrevocably

We are burdened but also privileged now. Because from this responsibility comes meaning and purpose—comes intense, life-giving warmth.

No, we have an obligation… …to the people who helped us …to the places that made us …to those who have been loyal to us …to the truth and to our cause …to the downtrodden and besieged and the friendless. We can’t wash our hands. We can’t stand on the sidelines. We can’t abandon ship.

Particularly grating to him were people who would begin a remark by claiming they were going to give it to him straight, implying, as we all so casually do, that most of the time we don’t tell the truth. Honesty should not need a preface.

We will regret many things in this life. But we’ll never regret being the kind of person who keeps their word.

Do what is right. Do it right now.

While we cannot change the past, we can—by refusing to deny it—do better in the future. In so doing, we begin to make amends for what has happened.