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Honesty is always the best policy. For a number of different reasons, but most importantly because it makes life simpler, makes relationships more meaningful and makes us feel better about the world and about ourselves.

"A lie will get you out of a scrape, and yet, strangely and beautifully, rapture possesses you when you have taken the scrape and left out the lie." ~ Charles Edward Montague

Honesty applies to all human behaviour and is essential to every aspect of human life. Humans are social creatures and honesty is an important function of social interaction. Honesty is the best policy because honesty is natural to humans; children have an innate honesty and a natural trust in the world around them.

"Pretty much all the honest truth telling in the world is done by children." ~ Oliver Wendell

We learn to be dishonest as we learn to fear life and its consequences, as we learn to fear what others will think of us, as we learn to fear ourselves. But honesty is a necessary function of reality; dishonesty imprisons reality and so makes life more difficult.

There are many unnecessary difficulties inherent in dishonesty: one lie will invariably lead to another, until we become lost in a web of deception; eventually it gets difficult to distinguish between what is true and what is false; remembering lies takes up a lot of memory; and worrying about whether lies will be discovered is a constant source of avoidable stress.

"The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold." ~ Aristotle

On the other hand, there are a number of excellent reasons for being honest. Perhaps the most fundamental of which is the fact that when you really need people to believe you (perhaps even in a matter of life and death, perhaps when evidence is mounted against you) they are more likely to assume you are being honest if you are known as an honest person.

Honesty is also the best policy for a healthy life; it means less stress and fewer sleepless nights. A healthy spirit as well as a healthy body and mind are seriously undermined by dishonesty. Emotional honesty is also essential to our health as individuals and to the health of the relationships we forge with others; it is important to recognize and express our feelings.

"Some people will not tolerate such emotional honesty in communication. They would rather defend their dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others. Therefore, having rationalized their phoniness into nobility, they settle for superficial relationships."

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