Honesty Is The Best Policy: The Truth Of The Statement

From a psychological point of view, being honest is the key to having a care-free mind as well as inner peace, solving many problems in our lives. On the other hand, telling a lie requires you to be aware and conscious to hide it forever, and requires you to come up with more lies to hide the previous ones. Plus, being truthful is socially accepted as opposed to not living by “honesty is the best policy”.Being truthful not only helps us gain people’s trust, but it also aids in finding true friends who share common interests. Furthermore, revealing the truth can potentially save lives as it leads to stronger and direct communication. For example, a murderer instructs you verbally or non-verbally to stay silent about a crime they may have committed. If you revealed these crimes to the authorities, your honesty may have prevented the murderer from committing more crimes. 

Another example is when a student sees another student cheating in an exam. In order to prevent them from potentially being expelled or receiving an academic misconduct, you refer the cheater to the coordinator, so that everyone can be fairly graded on their merits with no unfair advantages. Additionally, it may also stop the cheater from doing cheating repeatedly especially on large scale. So, it is true that honesty is the best policy. It is also true that sometimes telling white lies might prevent harm. According to consequentialists, if lying leads to a better outcome than not lying, then the former would be a good thing to do. For example, if you lie to a terrorist death squad about the whereabouts of the people that they're hunting, your one lie might save people's lives. Lying in threatening situations might give a person greater chance of survival. During a famine, lying about whether you have any food hidden away may be vital for the survival of your family. 

A white lie might also save your life; If a doctor lies about your critical situation, this may help you recover more quickly and prevent you from going into depression about your situation. Besides, a white lie may also prevent us from hurting others' feelings. For instance, if a friend asked you how she looked and you thought she looked bad, would you be honest with her or spare her feelings? Telling her a white lie might prevent you from hurting her feelings, as opposed to telling her the truth, which might instead make her overthink about herself.