"I've seen public opinion shift like the wind and put out the very fire it lighted"
About this Quote
Public opinion, in Rachel Field's telling, isn't a moral compass; it's weather. The line moves with a novelist's elegance but carries a reporter's sting: the same crowd that cheers the spark will smother it once the gust changes. Field turns a familiar metaphor (opinion as wind) into a sharper instrument by yoking it to fire - not just warmth, but ignition, danger, momentum. Fire is the thing that makes a private conviction public. Wind is the thing that makes it spread. And then, with one pivot, that spreading force becomes the extinguisher.
The intent feels less like lofty theorizing than a warning from someone watching reputations, causes, and artists rise and fall on the mood of the room. Field wrote in an America that cycled through crusades and backlashes: Progressive reform, wartime patriotism, the Red Scare, the boom-and-bust psychology of the 1920s and 30s. In that landscape, "public opinion" could be weapon and sanctuary, depending on whose name was on the poster.
The subtext is about volatility and complicity. People like to imagine public opinion as a collective conscience. Field suggests it's closer to a collective appetite: it can be kind, but it's rarely consistent, and it is quick to punish what it previously rewarded. That last clause - "the very fire it lighted" - lands like an indictment. It's not ignorance that kills the flame; it's fickleness. The line works because it refuses the comfort of inevitability: if wind can snuff the blaze, then sustaining it requires more than applause. It requires sturdier fuel than fashion.
The intent feels less like lofty theorizing than a warning from someone watching reputations, causes, and artists rise and fall on the mood of the room. Field wrote in an America that cycled through crusades and backlashes: Progressive reform, wartime patriotism, the Red Scare, the boom-and-bust psychology of the 1920s and 30s. In that landscape, "public opinion" could be weapon and sanctuary, depending on whose name was on the poster.
The subtext is about volatility and complicity. People like to imagine public opinion as a collective conscience. Field suggests it's closer to a collective appetite: it can be kind, but it's rarely consistent, and it is quick to punish what it previously rewarded. That last clause - "the very fire it lighted" - lands like an indictment. It's not ignorance that kills the flame; it's fickleness. The line works because it refuses the comfort of inevitability: if wind can snuff the blaze, then sustaining it requires more than applause. It requires sturdier fuel than fashion.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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