Movie Quote of the Day (‘Pat and Mike,’ With a Promoter on His New Athlete Client)

[A slightly shady promoter-manager summarizes his new client, exceptional multi-sport female athlete Pat Pemberton, played by Katharine Hepburn.]

Mike Conovan [played by Spencer Tracy] [to his friend Barney]: “You see her face? A real honest face. The only disgustin’ thing about her.”— Pat and Mike (1952), screenplay by Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin, directed by George Cukor

Quote of the Day (Stephen L. Carter, on the Difference Between Honesty and Integrity)

“The first point to understand about the difference between honesty and integrity is that a person may be entirely honest without ever engaging in the hard work of discernment that integrity requires: she may tell us quite truthfully what she believes without ever taking the time to figure out whether what she believes is good and right and true. The problem may be as simple as someone's foolishly saying something that hurts a friend's feelings; a few moments of thought would have revealed the likelihood of the hurt and the lack of necessity for the comment. Or the problem may be more complex, as when a man who was raised from birth in a society that preaches racism states his belief in one race's inferiority as a fact, without ever really considering that perhaps this deeply held view is wrong. Certainly the racist is being honest—he is telling us what he actually thinks—but his honesty does not add up to integrity.”— Yale Univ. law professor, legal- and social-policy writer, columnist, and best-selling novelist Stephen L. Carter, “The Insufficiency of Honesty,” The Atlantic Monthly, February 1996

In this last election, many voters mistook rudeness for candor. Events of the last four years have demonstrated the magnitude of this mistake—a confusion in perception that could have been avoided if Stephen L. Carter’s distinction of a quarter-century ago had been kept in mind.

But with all due respect to this incisive thinker, I don’t think that this exhausts all that can be said about the word “integrity.” Many supporters of the now-departing White House regime were right to find Hillary Clinton—and, to a significantly greater extent, husband Bill—deficient in integrity.

It all goes back to the Latin root of the word, integer, meaning “whole” or “complete.” Even more than perpetrating a series of unnecessary lies and incomplete versions of the truth, “Billary” had, in their determination to “compartmentalize” their private personas from their public duties, presented one vision of themselves in opposition to another.

In one sense, their detractors in the electorate understandably wanted an end to the couple’s artifice and broken personas. Where they went wrong was failing to ponder in the Republican candidate four years ago the lack of mental and moral hard work needed for integrity cited by Carter—and in failing to calculate how multitudinous and malignant that opponent’s deceptions were compared with Ms. Clinton.

(The image of Stephen L. Carter accompanying this post was taken at the 2015 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sept. 5, 2015, by fourandsixty.)

Quote of the Day (Ralph Waldo Emerson, on What Is Most Astonishing)

“Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.”— American philosopher, essayist, and poet Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), “Art,” 1841

Quote of the Day (Noel Coward, on What Shocks People—and What Doesn’t)

“It's a sad reflection on society how many people are shocked by honesty... and how few by dishonesty.” —British playwright Noel Coward (1899-1973), Blithe Spirit (1941)

Joke of the Day (Rodney Dangerfield, on Luck, Politics and Honesty)

“I get no respect. The way my luck is running, if I was a politician I’d be honest.”—Stand-up comic Rodney Dangerfield (1921-2004) quoted in Bob Fenster, Laugh Off: The Comedy Showdown Between Real Life and the Pros (2005)

Come to think of it, Rodney looks like all of us this week!

Quote of the Day (Mark Edmundson, on Heroes of ‘Serious Thought’)

“Even early on, as they enter the first phase of their lives as thinkers, they’ll have one of the greatest satisfactions a human being can have: They won’t lie. They’ll follow Socrates, and they’ll look out at the world, and with whatever mix of irony and sweetness and exasperation, they will describe it as it is to them. When others trim and sidestep, they will have the satisfaction of voicing honest perceptions.” —Mark Edmundson, on heroes of “serious thought,” in Self and Soul: A Defense of Ideals (2015)

Quote of the Day (Noel Coward, on Honesty and Deceit)

“It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”-- Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit (1941)