Daily Inspiration Quote by Eamon de Valera

Power doesn’t just tempt people to dominate; it tempts them to call domination “order.” De Valera’s line cuts through that self-justifying fog by naming the real moral test: not whether the weak behave well, but whether the strong can restrain themselves enough to behave justly. The opening clause is deliberately unsentimental. “It is indeed hard” concedes what politics often hides - that fairness costs the powerful something: speed, certainty, profit, pride, even security. He’s not flattering leaders with easy virtue; he’s warning them that the default setting of strength is to confuse capacity with entitlement.

The second clause shifts from ethics to strategy. “Acting justly always has its rewards” doesn’t promise sainthood; it promises outcomes. De Valera was a revolutionary turned head-of-government, a figure who lived inside the paradox of anti-imperial politics: yesterday’s oppressed can become tomorrow’s administrators, complete with police powers and prisons. In that context, the sentence reads like a preventative memo to a new ruling class - Ireland must not reproduce the logic of empire in miniature.

The subtext is also international. In an era defined by great-power muscle and smaller nations trying to survive between empires, he frames justice as a long game: legitimacy, stability, civic trust, the kind of authority that doesn’t require constant coercion. The line works because it treats morality as a form of realism. Justice isn’t softness; it’s the discipline that keeps strength from curdling into tyranny.