Daily Inspiration Quote by Abdolkarim Soroush

Selflessness is one of the great costumes of public life, and Soroush is tugging at the seams. His line aims at a familiar hypocrisy: people often act from ego while advertising a nobler cause. The “banner” matters because it’s political, not merely personal. A banner is what you march under, what legitimizes you, what recruits others. Soroush’s claim isn’t that ideals are fake; it’s that ideals are routinely used as cover for the oldest human impulse in the book: the desire to be central, to be seen as the author of meaning rather than one participant among many.

The subtext is a warning about moral branding. By “inscrib[ing] some other name,” actors borrow the authority of God, nation, revolution, justice, even “the people,” to launder private ambition into public virtue. It’s a critique of how movements can be hijacked by the psychology of the leader: the cause becomes a mirror, not a mission. That’s why the sentence is built on contrast - “they themselves” versus “some other name” - a clean rhetorical hinge that exposes the swap.

Contextually, Soroush writes out of Iran’s post-revolutionary experience and a broader Islamic reformist project wary of clerical absolutism. He has seen how sacred language can harden into power, how piety can become performance, how institutions can sanctify ego. The intent isn’t cynicism for its own sake; it’s an ethical diagnostic: if you want a healthier politics or religion, audit the banner and the person holding it.