Leadership Quote by Sam Houston

A new polity, Houston suggests, doesn’t arrive with a trumpet blast of wisdom; it arrives with a crowd of opportunists who mistake volume for vision. His phrasing is doing two jobs at once. On the surface, it’s a cranky observation about political staffing: revolutions and fresh governments attract “noisy, second-rate men.” Underneath, it’s a warning about the founding myth itself - that “new” equals “better,” that raw beginnings are naturally more virtuous than old institutions. Houston, a working politician and soldier of the Texas Revolution who later served as president of the Republic and U.S. senator, knew how quickly the romance of independence curdles into factionalism.

The insult is calibrated. “Second-rate” isn’t just moral condemnation; it’s about competence. These are men unqualified for statecraft but perfectly qualified for agitation, forever “in favor of rash and extreme measures” because extremity is the shortcut to relevance. Houston’s real target is the political incentive structure of a frontier republic: with weak institutions and high stakes, the loudest voices can steer policy toward spectacle - punitive campaigns, reckless expansionism, performative bravado - while moderation reads as softness.

Then he twists the knife: “but Texas was absolutely overrun.” That clause turns a general law of politics into an indictment of a specific moment. It’s Houston positioning himself as the adult in the room, defending legitimacy against the very energy that brought Texas into being. The subtext is bleakly modern: founding a state doesn’t just create freedom; it creates a market for demagogues.