Quote of the Day: W. Somerset Maugham on Daily Inspiration

Your phone can deliver a thousand opinions before breakfast: headlines, hot takes, highlight reels, and the quiet pressure to keep up. In that noise, it’s easy to mistake constant input for progress, and to feel strangely powerless even while “connected.” That’s why this simple line lands like a reset button: “There are two good things in life - freedom of thought and freedom of action.”

Freedom of thought is the private room no algorithm can enter unless you hand over the keys. It’s the ability to sit with an idea long enough to test it, question it, refine it, and to let your values be chosen rather than absorbed. Practically, it means creating space between stimulus and response: fewer reactive comments, more deliberate conclusions. Guard that space with small rituals: a walk without earbuds, a page of journaling, a daily “What do I actually believe?” check-in.

Freedom of action is where your inner clarity becomes real. It’s agency, the right and responsibility to move your life in the direction your mind has endorsed. Without action, thought becomes a beautiful prison; without thought, action becomes borrowed motion. Choose one domain you control today (your calendar, your spending, your attention) and make one decision that proves you’re steering. This is how freedom becomes a lived experience, and how courage stops being a slogan.

W. Somerset Maugham earned his authority the hard way, through a prolific career of novels, plays, and travel-infused stories that observed human nature with uncommon clarity. His work endures because it maps the tension between who we are and who we’re brave enough to become.

Today, write one sentence you won’t outsource: “I think ___, and I will do ___.” Then take the smallest possible first step within the next hour, send the email, make the appointment, say the honest no. May your mind be your own, and your day follow suit.