When you're young, you hear older people talking about experiences they've had, lessons they've learnt. Often, you end up respecting these older folk for the lessons you perceive in these tales, for the principles that end up sticking in your mind. Principles that aren't just imparted to you with the expectation that you'll believe them, but principles that give you hope because of their nature: the fact that they're logically reasoned, and that the very logical reasoning they're based implies that your human mind has the power to produce, to create, to be extraordinary.
And then you grow older. You see the world doing things differently to what your reasoning says, and to what your principles reflect. You question the world's reasoning, and often find that there is no reasoning at all - the world does things because it isn't perfect, because perfect logic can only apply in a perfect world.
Some people try to get the world to adopt reasoning, but are crippled at every attempt to do so, because reasoning is for a theoretical world, and not the real world. Eventually, they end up adopting the world's way, because not doing so is much harder, perceived to be much less fruitful and ultimately pointless. The world is bigger than individual thought, it is said, and so they start believing that fighting the world's lack of reasoning is a waste of time.
Other people, also trying to get the world to adopt reasoning, end up differently. They understand that the world doesn't always reason, but stubbornly keep on trying to change individuals, and by implication the world. They refuse to accept that the world cannot be a place of reason, because the world is made up of individuals, and individuals have the ability to reason. Importantly, they keep the principles originally passed on to them close to their hearts, not because these principles remind them of the respect they have for those that taught them; but because each principle reminds them of their own ability to reason, to arrive at each principle in the first place. These people stick to what they believe is right in the face of others who gradually give up reason, saddened by the notion of a mind which justifies a loss of reason with gaining the ability to succeed in a world without it.
Today, I'm of the opinion that the world needs more principled individuals - not because of their principles, but because their ability to reason gives them the capability to make the world a logical place, one individual at a time.