Announce your principles loudly enough and nobody will notice you have never used them.

The line is for the person who treats a declaration as a deed. You have a talent for the noble sentence, the principled objection, the stirring statement of what you would never tolerate, and you deliver each one as though the saying of it were the doing of it. It is not. Principles are not ornaments to be displayed at dinner and then returned to the shelf; they are instructions, and you have never followed the ones you own. Notice how quickly the volume rises when the subject is other people's conduct and how carefully it drops when the same standard might be applied to you. That is the sting. The performance is not evidence of a spine; it is a substitute for one. You have mistaken the applause of the like-minded for proof of character, when all they have witnessed is someone clearing their throat. The line lands best when you are midway through another impassioned monologue about integrity, or when you describe yourself as someone who always speaks up and someone at the table quietly checks whether you have ever actually done anything. There is no need to answer. Your principles have been announced. They have not been used.