"Everyone is bound to bear patiently the results of his own example"
About this Quote
A neat little moral boomerang: whatever you model for others will eventually come back and sit in your lap. Phaedrus frames it as patience, not outrage, because the sting isn’t merely that consequences arrive - it’s that they arrive wearing your own handwriting. The line’s quiet cruelty is its insistence on ownership. You don’t get to perform a set of values in public and then plead surprise when people treat those values as permission.
As a Roman-era poet writing fables, Phaedrus trafficked in compressed ethics, the kind meant to travel by memory through households, schools, and courts. In that world, “example” is social technology. Status is taught, authority is rehearsed, and imitation is a civic habit. Leaders set tones; parents set norms; the powerful teach the rules by bending them. The quote aims at the comfortable fantasy that influence is optional. It isn’t. You’re instructing even when you’re “just” living.
The subtext is sharper: patience is not a virtue here so much as a sentence. If you normalized cruelty, don’t be shocked by a cruel culture. If you gamed the rules, don’t clutch pearls when the game turns on you. Phaedrus also smuggles in a warning about hypocrisy without saying “hypocrite.” He doesn’t accuse; he forecasts.
It works because it shifts morality from private intention to public demonstration. Your “example” is the loudest part of you - and the results, however inconvenient, are the part you don’t get to edit.
As a Roman-era poet writing fables, Phaedrus trafficked in compressed ethics, the kind meant to travel by memory through households, schools, and courts. In that world, “example” is social technology. Status is taught, authority is rehearsed, and imitation is a civic habit. Leaders set tones; parents set norms; the powerful teach the rules by bending them. The quote aims at the comfortable fantasy that influence is optional. It isn’t. You’re instructing even when you’re “just” living.
The subtext is sharper: patience is not a virtue here so much as a sentence. If you normalized cruelty, don’t be shocked by a cruel culture. If you gamed the rules, don’t clutch pearls when the game turns on you. Phaedrus also smuggles in a warning about hypocrisy without saying “hypocrite.” He doesn’t accuse; he forecasts.
It works because it shifts morality from private intention to public demonstration. Your “example” is the loudest part of you - and the results, however inconvenient, are the part you don’t get to edit.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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