Life & Wisdom Quote by Nicolas Chamfort

A guillotine-era skeptic, Chamfort doesn’t flatter the Enlightenment faith that reason will steadily deliver us to The Truth. He draws a cruel, elegant line: virtue is an aspiration; truth is a fantasy with better branding.

The phrasing matters. “May aspire” carries a grudging permission, not a celebration. Virtue is hard, but at least it’s legible as an ethical project: you can try, fail, try again. “Cannot reasonably aspire” is the dagger twist. The word “reasonably” turns the Enlightenment’s prized tool into the instrument of its limitation. If you’re being rational, Chamfort implies, you’ll stop pretending truth is a destination you can reach by sheer intellectual stamina. He’s not denying that facts exist; he’s mocking the human habit of treating our perceptions, interests, and tribal loyalties as if they add up to something impartial.

The subtext is social as much as philosophical. In late-18th-century France, “truth” was currency in salons, pamphlets, and revolutionary rhetoric; everyone claimed it, few could afford its consequences. Virtue, too, was a public performance, but it at least admits its own theatricality: it’s about conduct, not omniscience. Truth claims, by contrast, smuggle in authority. They grant permission to judge, punish, purify.

Chamfort’s intent is defensive realism: aim for decency because it’s the only aspiration that doesn’t require you to lie to yourself about your own objectivity. In an age where politics kept declaring itself scientific and final, he offers a chilling correction: certainty is the most unreasonable ambition of all.