Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas Fuller

Fuller’s line cuts against the pious reflex to treat promises as sacred objects. It’s a moral dare: stop worshipping the act of keeping your word when the content of that word might be rotten. Coming from a 17th-century clergyman, the sting is deliberate. Fuller isn’t giving license for flaky opportunism; he’s re-ordering loyalties. Your first allegiance is to the good, not to your own prior commitment, not to your reputation for reliability, not to the social comfort that comes from “a deal’s a deal.”

The subtext is about the vanity baked into “honor.” People cling to promises partly because breaking them looks weak, inconsistent, unmanly, untrustworthy. Fuller punctures that self-image: a person can be impeccably consistent and still be consistently wrong. The phrase “do worse in keeping it” implies a moral calculus where the harm caused by follow-through outweighs the sin of reversal. He’s carving out an ethical escape hatch for the moment you realize your vow would make you complicit.

Context matters: Fuller lived through England’s civil wars, religious upheaval, and shifting regimes, a period when oaths and allegiances were demanded, policed, and punished. In that world, “keeping your word” could mean endorsing a violent faction, enforcing unjust rules, or betraying conscience to survive politically. Fuller’s point is quietly radical: integrity isn’t stubbornness. Sometimes the righteous act is to admit you were wrong, absorb the reputational hit, and refuse to let a past promise become a present excuse.