Daily Inspiration Quote by Charles Maurice de Talleyrand

A diplomat’s maxim that reads like a Zen koan, then snaps shut like a trap. Talleyrand’s line weaponizes inversion: we’re trained to romanticize “gut instinct,” but he tells you to mistrust it precisely because it’s “nearly always good.” The joke isn’t that goodness is bad; it’s that goodness is politically dangerous.

The intent is prophylactic. First impulses are the reflexes of conscience: candor, outrage, mercy, clarity. In private life they can be virtues; in court life they’re liabilities. Talleyrand spent his career surfing regime changes - ancien regime, Revolution, Napoleon, Restoration - and surviving by not being the loudest moralist in the room. The subtext is a field manual for self-preservation inside systems that punish purity. If your first impulse is to tell the truth, pick a side, denounce the hypocrite, or act decisively, pause. Those moves feel clean; they also make you predictable, and predictability is how you get outmaneuvered.

The line works because it’s a confession disguised as advice. It flatters the reader’s self-image (“your instincts are good”) while quietly arguing that goodness is an impulse to be managed, deferred, even betrayed when the stakes demand it. “Nearly always” adds a cold, statistical shrug: morality may be reliable, but politics is not.

In Talleyrand’s world, virtue is not the absence of calculation; it’s the most costly form of it. The wit lands because it dares you to recognize the uncomfortable truth: your best self is often the first thing power requires you to edit.