What is generally meant by honesty?

Honesty is considered to be one of the most valuable and substantial qualities. Integrity is widely praised by a number of prominent authors. The most intelligent people of the human history, including R.L. Stevenson, F. Dostoyevsky, J. Austen and many others philosophized on this subject. Should we be sincere in every particular case? Could a white lie be excused? Nevertheless, firstly we should clearly define this concept. We can definitely claim that honesty is a fact of being fair, dependable and sincere. As an alternative we may say that it’s a freedom from deceit and fraud. Integrity is basically a synonym to honesty. It is a quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, which depends on personal choice. Though this issue is quite sophisticated, everyone faces it and has to deal with it almost every single day. So let’s regard each separate aspect of this question with help of this essay on honesty.

Academic honesty

One of the most burning subjects (mostly for students) connected with this issue is academic dishonesty. Moreover, this phenomenon is typical for all levels of education. It’s interesting enough that one of the survey conducted in USA proved that 20% of students started cheating in the first grade. It’s quite funny that even school or college essays on the subject of honesty usually contain cases of academic dishonesty. There is a numberless amount of cheating ways both among the student and the teachers:

• cheating ( any kind of forbidden information exchange between students);
• bribery;
• deception ( providing of any kind of false information to your teacher/professor);
• fabrication;
• plagiarism;
• professorial misconduct;
• sabotage.

Any kind of academic dishonest is commonly punished, so you’d better avoid them. Plagiarism is thought to be one of the most widespread ways of cheating. There are two main ideas, which may help you to overcome this problem. The first one is writing all your academic papers by yourself, in spite of the total lack of time during studying years. And the second way is using of essay writing services,  which cooperate with professional essay creators and may guarantee you plagiarism-free essays without any kind of mistakes. The choice depends on you. But an academic honesty essay is a topic for another conversation.

Honesty is the best policy

This popular quotation belongs to Benjamin Franklin. It seems to be a complete truism, but in reality it usually depends on situation. Many people claim that honesty and integrity are the keys to the doors of life success. Besides, some people think that honesty is a backbone of strong and healthy interpersonal relations. Another advantage of being honest is the fact that you don’t have to remember the things you said when you were lying. By the way, A. Lincoln once said: “No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar”. On the other hand, liars are usually fearful, immoral and mentally weak. Besides, dishonest people often suffer from twinges of conscience, which definitely don’t further your calmness and soul pacification. So it’s fair to say that honest people live more peaceful life and tend to be more psychologically healthy.

Nevertheless, some people claim that being dishonest sometimes could be profitable and bring success. They expect that a lie will turn to be their path to dolce vita. They are also persuaded that a lie sometimes is able to save relationship. But don’t forget to mention in your essay about honesty the fact that this prosperity will not last forever. You will be afraid of disclosure every minute. Is it really adequate price for success?

By the way, being a person of integrity doesn’t simply mean always saying the truth. We may separate two different concepts: internal and external honesty. For example, you may always say only truth, but be dishonest to yourself. That means be dishonest about your opinion, beliefs and goals. And this is quite a dangerous situation, because when you start lying to yourself, you stop being an integral person and begin to lose self-respect.

It’s necessary to mention that a real person of integrity will not use the chance to cheat, even if he/she is absolutely convinced that nobody will find this fact out. So one of the most important traits of honest person is being fair just in order to keep their conscience clear, not to be praised by other people.

Some people say that a white lie could be a solution for a great variety of problems. Sometimes it could. But nonetheless lying in small things can easily turn into a habit, which is quite hard to get rid of. Consequently this inoffensive habit may turn into more serious. Step by step, you start to lie in more and more important questions and this could become a real problem.

Bringing up an honest person

Since being honest is an extremely challenging task, it’s a good idea to bring up this quality from the early childhood. First of all, it’s a hard job for parents and school teachers. Writing honesty and integrity essays and discussions on this topic in the class could be a great educational solution. The problem is that children often lie. And not because of selfish interests, but because of their rich imagination. The parent’s task is to teach children how to find the difference between a lie and fancy. Be honest with your children and try to speak in a simple style, even if you speak about serious issues. Stay strictly on your position, try not to change it. This actions will help you to form your child’s character, values and strong life position. Communicate more with them, talk up their problems and issues, which trouble them. For them relations between members of the family mean the future model of relations in the society. Be an example for your kids. Trust your children and teach them to trust you. One can’t say the same thing about the teenagers. They usually try to cheat, because of their own profit. So parents should pay a special attention to their behavior and cases of being dishonest. Talk to teens calmly. Maybe they lie in order to hide their problems or things, which bother them. The importance of honesty essay in school years hardly could be overestimated. However, using paper writing services is an option. It gives children a valuable lesson of forming, organizing and expressing their thoughts, which plays a prominent role in the development of honest and independent personality. This skills will be pretty useful for a successful socializing in the world of grown-ups.

I believe it would be reasonable to sum up with a quote of a famous American talk show host Oprah Winfrey: “Truth allows you to live with integrity. Everything you do and say shows the world who you really are. Let it be the Truth”. Remember that a lie is a weapon of spiritually weak people, who are afraid of facing the responsibility for their actions. Such a childish behavior will prevent you from personal development and growth in every sphere of your life. So don’t hide behind a mask of lying, show the world who you really are and what you are capable of. Don’t hesitate and let the reading of this honesty essay be the first step on your integrity way.