Life & Wisdom Quote by Sophocles

“Evil counsel travels fast” is a bleak little observation about how quickly bad ideas acquire legs, especially when they flatter fear, ambition, or laziness. Sophocles isn’t moralizing in the abstract; he’s diagnosing a social mechanism. Advice is never neutral in Greek tragedy. Counsel is power wearing the mask of reason: the persuasive whisper at court, the friend’s strategic “realism,” the chorus of onlookers nudging a ruler toward the choice that will satisfy pride now and punish everyone later.

The line works because it treats corruption as viral. “Evil” isn’t just a villain’s intent; it’s a kind of efficiency. Harmful counsel spreads faster than prudent counsel because it offers simple stories and clean permission. It tells you what you already want to believe: that you’re justified, that the ends will redeem the means, that consequences can be managed. Good counsel, by contrast, is slow. It asks for restraint, for uncertainty, for the humiliating act of waiting.

In Sophocles’ world, speed itself is suspect. Tragedy is often the record of a decision made too quickly, an anger acted on before the facts arrive, a leader listening to the loudest voice in the room. The subtext is political: a warning about courts and cities where reputation moves faster than truth, where rumor outruns deliberation, where the wrong adviser can become the de facto author of policy. The line lands like a proverb because it’s describing what audiences recognize: the seduction of the shortcut, and the catastrophe it delivers on time.