Politics & Power Quote by Walter Savage Landor

Landor’s line is a neat little trap: it flatters the idealist in you with “truth always prevails,” then snaps shut with the darker addendum that politics runs on the opposite fuel. The pivot does the real work. “In argument” suggests a closed room and a defined ruleset - logic, evidence, the slow pressure of reason. “Finally” is the poet’s hedge and his dare: truth may crawl, but it gets there. Then “in politics” opens the door to crowds, incentives, faction, power. No “finally” here, just “always,” a deliberately brutal absolute that treats public life as a machine built to reward the useful lie.

The subtext is less about epistemology than about arenas. Landor isn’t claiming truth is metaphysically stronger than falsehood; he’s pointing out that outcomes depend on what gets measured. In argument, you’re supposed to concede when cornered. In politics, you’re supposed to win - and “falsehood” is often cheaper, faster, more emotionally legible, easier to chant. The sentence reads like an epigram, but it’s really a diagnostic: rhetoric isn’t corrupted by politics; it’s recruited by it.

Context matters. Landor wrote in a Britain rocked by reform battles, post-revolutionary anxiety, and an expanding press culture where public opinion became a battlefield. A poet watching that churn could believe in reason as an ideal while doubting its civic effectiveness. The bite of the quote is that it doesn’t ask us to pick a side; it suggests we already did, every time we confuse being right with being rewarded.