Wealth & Money Quote by Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Flattery, La Rochefoucauld suggests, isn’t sweet talk so much as counterfeit: it circulates because we agree to treat it as real. The insult is aimed less at the flatterer than at the flattered. Bad money only works in an economy that’s already hungry for exchange, and the quote turns vanity into the central bank - stamping value onto paper-thin praise simply because it wants to believe.

The genius is the shift from moral language to market logic. Flattery becomes a transaction with incentives, not a lapse in etiquette. The flatterer profits by offering cheap currency; the recipient “profits” by cashing in a momentary boost to the ego. Everyone knows, on some level, that the bill is fake, but the pleasure of spending it outweighs the embarrassment of admitting you’ve been duped. That’s why the line lands with such chilly precision: it frames self-deception as a collective agreement, a social contract of insincerity.

Context matters. Writing amid the intrigues of the French court, La Rochefoucauld watched status depend on performance, favor, and carefully rationed approval. In that world, praise wasn’t truth; it was strategy. His maxim sounds like wit, but it’s really anthropology: a portrait of how power and attention move through rooms.

The subtext is bleakly modern. Replace court salons with group chats, workplaces, and social media metrics, and the economy of bad money looks familiar. Flattery thrives not because liars are persuasive, but because vanity is solvent.