Life & Wisdom Quote by Jean de La Fontaine

Power isn’t always power; sometimes it’s just wardrobe. La Fontaine’s line lands because it exposes how easily fear can be manufactured when people mistake symbols for substance. A donkey in a lion’s skin doesn’t become regal or brave, yet it can still “spread terror far and wide” because the crowd does the work for it. The terror isn’t proof of the lion’s presence; it’s proof of collective misrecognition.

That’s the fable’s sly sting: authority is often a costume, and institutions, titles, uniforms, and curated reputations can compel obedience long before anyone checks what’s underneath. The ass is a perfect instrument for this critique because it’s a stock figure for stubborn mediocrity. La Fontaine isn’t warning us about brilliant deceivers; he’s warning us about the banal ones who succeed anyway, buoyed by other people’s assumptions.

Context matters. Writing under Louis XIV’s France, La Fontaine lived in a culture of strict hierarchies and elaborate court theater, where rank was performed as much as it was possessed. Fables offered a politically safe way to talk about power’s absurdities: animals could say what citizens couldn’t. The line reads like a miniature sociology lesson delivered with a poet’s economy. Fear travels “far and wide” because it’s contagious and efficient; it saves us the trouble of verifying reality.

The subtext is bracingly modern: if enough people treat the costume as real, the costume becomes a kind of reality. Until the bray gives it away.