Wit & Attitude Quote by E. T. Bell

Bell’s jab lands because it steals the grandest political metaphor available - monarchy - and uses it to describe the flimsiest engine of consensus: fashion. Calling Fashion “King” acknowledges its real authority. Trends don’t merely decorate society; they legislate taste, credential who belongs, and punish dissent with ridicule. But Bell’s kicker, “sometimes a very stupid ruler,” punctures the romance of that power. A king can be obeyed without being wise; in fact, the whole joke is that rule and intelligence are not correlated.

The line carries a mathematician’s impatience with inherited habits. In Bell’s world, the best ideas are supposed to win by proof, not by prestige. Yet academia, like every other human system, has its seasons: fashionable problems attract funding, fashionable methods become gatekeeping tools, fashionable theories enjoy a grace period even when their foundations wobble. Bell isn’t denying that fashions can be productive - they can focus attention, coordinate communities, accelerate shared progress. He’s warning that they also create intellectual monocultures, where “everyone is doing it” becomes a substitute for “it’s true” or even “it’s good.”

Subtextually, the quote is a defense of unfashionable thinking: the slow, stubborn work of checking assumptions, staying with an idea after the applause moves on. “Sometimes” is doing careful work, too - Bell isn’t moralizing against trends as such. He’s diagnosing the recurring moment when social momentum outruns judgment, and the court starts calling that momentum wisdom.