Daily Inspiration Quote by Jeremy Collier

A line like this sounds like a pat on the back from a genteel moralist, but Collier is doing something sharper: he is dangling ambition in front of the reader and then quietly relocating the source of greatness. As a clergyman writing in a culture obsessed with rank, patronage, and inherited advantage, Collier frames “great” not as a birthright but as a choice - and then sneaks in the real constraint: “as he pleases.”

That last phrase is the hinge. It flatters individual desire (you can be as great as you want), while implying that many people don’t actually want greatness once it carries its full price tag: discipline, restraint, duty, reputational risk. Collier’s intent isn’t to endorse social climbing so much as to moralize it. Greatness, for him, is less about grabbing power than governing the self. The “fair turn” suggests providential order: life rotates opportunities through the crowd, and your task is to answer when your moment arrives. If you squander it, the fault isn’t the system; it’s your will.

There’s also a quiet polemic against aristocratic entitlement. Collier can’t abolish hierarchy, but he can redefine the scoreboard. In a Christian framework, the peasant can outscore the lord if he chooses virtue over vanity. The quote works because it offers empowerment without rebellion: it promises agency, then channels that agency into an ethics of personal responsibility rather than political critique.