Wit & Attitude Quote by Philip Stanhope

Stanhope isn’t lamenting human nature so much as mapping the social physics of power: respect, he implies, is often a numbers game, not a moral verdict. His line splits the world into “fools and knaves” - the credulous and the corrupt - then delivers the sting: even when they’re contemptible in character, they become unavoidably consequential in aggregate. That “singly from their number” is the key. The individual may be beneath esteem; the crowd they belong to can still tilt elections, wreck reforms, decide reputations, and make life unpleasant for anyone who forgets to flatter them.

The rhetorical move is brutally pragmatic. Stanhope grants “must… be respected” as a kind of civic concession, then undercuts it with “by no means respectable,” separating deference from admiration. It’s an instruction manual for navigating a public sphere where status is detached from virtue. Coming from an 18th-century statesman - and a famous tutor of manners in his letters - it reads as less misanthropy than political hygiene: don’t confuse courtesy with endorsement, and don’t mistake popularity for worth.

The context is a Britain where expanding print culture, party maneuvering, and the growing visibility of “public opinion” made elite rule feel newly contingent. Stanhope’s anxiety isn’t that fools exist; it’s that they can form a majority. The subtext: if you want to govern, persuade, or even survive socially, you’ll spend time paying respect to people you don’t respect at all.