Politics & Power Quote by Abba Eban

Wisdom, in Abba Eban's telling, isn’t a virtue so much as a late-stage symptom. The line lands because it flips the flattering civic myth - that leaders deliberate, learn, then choose the right path - into a grimmer operating manual: rationality is what shows up after ego, ideology, inertia, and miscalculation have all had their turn at the wheel.

Eban was a diplomat, which means he spent a career watching “options” get tried not because they were good, but because they were available to the domestic politics of the moment. The phrase “men and nations” collapses the scale between individual pride and state behavior, suggesting that the same psychological arc drives both: denial, bargaining, blame, then belated clarity. “Exhausted” does heavy lifting. It implies not thoughtful consideration but depletion - resources burned, credibility spent, lives lost. Wisdom arrives like an ambulance, not a muse.

The subtext is both cynical and oddly pragmatic. Cynical, because it assumes a predictable tendency toward error; pragmatic, because it quietly reassures you that systems can still self-correct, even if only when cornered. As an Israeli statesman navigating Cold War pressures, regional wars, and the brutal constraints of coalition politics, Eban knew that “the best option” is often politically illegal until every worse option has been publicly tested and found wanting.

It’s also a warning disguised as a shrug: if you want wiser outcomes sooner, don’t just argue for the right policy - shorten the runway for the wrong ones.