"It does not pay a prophet to be too specific"
About this Quote
Prophecy works best when it behaves like a horoscope: roomy, not rigid. L. Sprague de Camp, a science-fiction writer with a historian’s eye for how ideas age, nails the dirty secret of prediction in one dry sentence. The prophet who gets granular hands enemies a calendar and a ruler. Once you name the date, the city, the culprit, you invite verification and therefore failure. Vagueness isn’t a flaw in the prophecy economy; it’s the business model.
The line’s bite is in “does not pay.” De Camp frames foresight as a transaction, not a sacred calling. The prophet isn’t primarily chasing truth; he’s managing risk, reputation, and repeat customers. Specificity turns revelation into a testable claim, and testable claims are brutal: the world changes, variables multiply, and even correct intuitions become “wrong” when the details miss by an inch. Better to predict “turmoil,” “a great leader,” “a sudden shift” - meanings that can be snapped onto whatever happens next.
Coming from a mid-century genre writer, the context matters. Science fiction is often accused of “getting the future wrong,” yet it persists because its real product isn’t accuracy; it’s interpretive frameworks. De Camp’s sentence is a sly defense of broad-strokes futurism and an indictment of anyone selling certainty. The subtext is almost journalistic: beware the pundit with a confident timeline. Precision is persuasive, but it’s also where bullshit goes to die.
The line’s bite is in “does not pay.” De Camp frames foresight as a transaction, not a sacred calling. The prophet isn’t primarily chasing truth; he’s managing risk, reputation, and repeat customers. Specificity turns revelation into a testable claim, and testable claims are brutal: the world changes, variables multiply, and even correct intuitions become “wrong” when the details miss by an inch. Better to predict “turmoil,” “a great leader,” “a sudden shift” - meanings that can be snapped onto whatever happens next.
Coming from a mid-century genre writer, the context matters. Science fiction is often accused of “getting the future wrong,” yet it persists because its real product isn’t accuracy; it’s interpretive frameworks. De Camp’s sentence is a sly defense of broad-strokes futurism and an indictment of anyone selling certainty. The subtext is almost journalistic: beware the pundit with a confident timeline. Precision is persuasive, but it’s also where bullshit goes to die.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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