Wit & Attitude Quote by Charles Spurgeon

Speed is the real villain here. Spurgeon’s line isn’t just a clever proverb about dishonesty; it’s a diagnosis of how attention moves. The lie “travels,” personified as a tireless courier with a head start, while truth is stuck in the humble, bodily ritual of “putting on its shoes.” That homely detail matters: truth isn’t lofty revelation descending from heaven. It’s labor. It requires preparation, verification, and the unglamorous work of being ready to be seen in public.

As a 19th-century clergyman, Spurgeon preached in an age of mass print, pamphlet wars, and religious polemics where reputations could be ruined in a week and corrected in a month. The subtext is pastoral but unsentimental: falsehood thrives because it flatters impulse. It offers instant coherence, a villain, a shortcut. Truth, by contrast, has to gather witnesses, sift motives, withstand cross-examination. The quote smuggles in a moral challenge: if you care about what’s true, you can’t merely be right; you have to be timely, disciplined, and willing to chase the story already sprinting away.

Spurgeon’s intent also carries a warning to the righteous. Truth’s slowness can become an excuse for silence or complacency, as if accuracy absolves you from persuasion. The line lands because it treats information as kinetic, competitive, and unfair - a race where virtue doesn’t guarantee victory, only the obligation to keep running.