Wit & Attitude Quote by Giacomo Casanova

Casanova’s line is a confession dressed up as a sneer: he claims an “unconquerable hatred” for fools, then admits the real injury is how quickly their presence makes him feel stupid. That twist is the engine. It’s not just contempt; it’s panic about contamination, about slipping into the social sludge. The “very blood” phrasing tries to naturalize the prejudice, as if disdain is hardwired, not chosen. But the second clause undercuts the bravado. If fools can make him a “blockhead,” then the boundary between the clever libertine and the “tribe” he scorns is frighteningly porous.

Calling them a “whole tribe” is telling. It’s a sweeping category that turns individual irritation into a worldview. Casanova is performing a kind of aristocratic sensibility: the cultivated man besieged by mediocrity. Yet he’s also revealing a sharper, more modern insecurity: intelligence as a social mood, not a permanent possession. In company, we mirror; we pick up rhythms, vocabulary, standards. His hatred reads like preemptive self-defense against that mimicry.

Context matters: Casanova lived by charm, improvisation, and reputation - an 18th-century celebrity whose survival depended on reading rooms fast and playing roles convincingly. For someone like him, being surrounded by fools isn’t merely annoying; it’s professionally dangerous. If your currency is wit, the worst fear isn’t that others are dumb. It’s that you’ll start sounding like them, and the mask won’t hold.