Integrity

First you find yourself overlooking small infractions that you would have corrected on the spot in the past.

Soon you are a participant in these infractions. "After all," you say, "Everybody's doing it."

All too soon you find yourself trapped. You no longer can stand on a favorite principle because you have strayed from it.

Finding no way out, you begin to rationalize, and then you are hooked.

The important fact is, the men who travel the path outlined above have misused the very basic quality and characteristic expected of a professional military man, or any other professional man for that matter.
They have compromised their integrity.
Admiral Arleigh A. Burke, NAVAL LEADERSHIP - Voices of Experience

Note from a reader of the blog: Admiral Burke also included that quote, with the same attribution, in an article entitled "Integrity" in the "Proceedings of the Naval Institute" journal, in their Leadership Forum. I copied the quote from that article. IIRC, the article appeared there in the 1980's.