Daily Inspiration Quote by Horace Porter

"Be moderate in everything, including moderation" lands like a disciplined man letting himself smile. On the surface it’s a tidy paradox, the kind you can stitch onto a pillow. In a soldier’s mouth, it reads less like a party trick and more like field doctrine: rules keep you alive, but blind devotion to rules can get you killed.

The intent is to defend balance without turning balance into a new form of fanaticism. "Moderation" can be a moral pose, a way to claim superiority over the passionate, the radical, the messy. Porter’s twist punctures that self-congratulation. If you worship moderation, you’re still worshiping something; you’ve just chosen the safer altar. The line smuggles in permission for strategic excess: moments when restraint is cowardice, when conviction has to be loud, when patience becomes complicity.

The subtext is a warning about temperament and power. Armies run on discipline, but wars are won (and lost) by decisive departures from routine: a forced march, an audacious flank, a refusal to compromise with disaster. In that light, "including moderation" is not a call to abandon control; it’s a reminder that control is a tool, not an identity.

Contextually, Porter’s career spanned an America that lurched between reconciliation and retaliation, expansion and reform, restraint and crusade. The quote sounds like a veteran’s response to the era’s moral absolutisms: keep your head, but don’t confuse calm with correctness.