Life & Wisdom Quote by Bryant H. McGill

McGill is doing something deceptively strategic here: he elevates politeness from “nice-to-have” etiquette into a kind of social currency that even the most disliked person can spend. The line hinges on contrast. “Callousness and insolence” aren’t merely bad manners; they’re antisocial signals that invite “unanimous” punishment, a strong word that implies rare consensus in a fragmented public. Then he flips to “simple efforts,” intentionally downshifting the bar. This isn’t sainthood; it’s basic decency - and the payoff is disproportionate: admiration.

The subtext is less about moral purity than about how reputations actually work. People don’t just judge what you believe or who you are; they judge how you make others feel in shared spaces. Politeness becomes a workaround for bias and contempt: even “those who are otherwise despised” can earn a sliver of approval if they perform respect. That’s both hopeful and a little bleak. It suggests society may forgive surface behavior faster than it reforms deeper prejudice, and that civility can function as camouflage.

Contextually, this lands in late-20th/early-21st-century self-help humanism: social harmony framed as a choice and a practice. It’s also a quiet critique of status culture. Politeness is pitched as the one virtue that can’t be monopolized by the powerful. You can be wrong, unpopular, even hated - but if you’re not cruel, you’ve denied the crowd its easiest justification for condemnation.