The Crook and The Honest Man

"In modern business it is not the crook who is to be feared most, it is the honest man who doesn't know what he is doing." - William Wordsworth


As soon as I read this quote I thought of a variety of things that this completely relates to or describes. There are always people doing the wrong thing or something destructive without the knowing of the people who should. When someone sees those actions going on they become the person to fear, for the crook to fear. That being said, I wonder who should be the one with fear and the one causing it. We've all had that feeling when we do something we know someone is going to tell on us about it. So at the moment we are committing to that unjust action, we are the crook, and at the moment the person who is going to tell on us comes in, the honest person who doesn't know what they are doing, we shift in our mind from having power to fearing and asking for mercy. In the end, the person the unjust is being shown by the crook should have no fear, because the crook himself should fear the people around him that witnessed his unjust. Another thing that I thought about was, if one word in this quote was changed, "doesn't" to "does." The whole quote would change and all of a sudden, the honest man would be put in a position of a black mailer who both the crook and the person the unjust action is being done onto have reason to fear, which would make him a whole other crook. This quote leaves me with the question of where fear really even starts.