Daily Inspiration Quote by John Simon

It lands like a gavel and a sneer: not an attack on voters so much as a shot at the romance Americans attach to voting. John Simon, a critic by trade and temperament, is less interested in policy mechanics than in puncturing the pieties around “the will of the people.” The line’s sting comes from its blunt inversion of democracy’s PR. Instead of wisdom rising from the crowd, he suggests ignorance scaled up, legitimized, and then weaponized.

The specific intent is provocation with a purpose. Simon is warning that democratic procedure doesn’t magically manufacture expertise; it often rewards confidence, slogans, and tribal belonging. The subtext is about authority: who gets to decide what, and why we pretend every citizen must be equally competent on every issue. The word “encourages” is doing quiet work. It implies a system that doesn’t merely permit ignorance but incentivizes it by treating complex questions as if they’re accessible through gut feeling and partisan identity.

Context matters. Simon came of age amid mass media’s expansion, the rise of televised politics, culture wars, and a late-20th-century distrust of elites that paradoxically coexisted with ever more technical governance. A critic’s lament echoes here: expertise is unpopular, but complexity doesn’t go away. The quote doesn’t argue for dictatorship; it argues against complacency. It’s a reminder that democracy is not a synonym for truth, only a method for choosing power - and methods can be gamed when the majority is invited to feel informed rather than become informed.