"Nothing sways the stupid more than arguments they can't understand"
About this Quote
Power doesn’t always need persuasion; it just needs fog. Cardinal de Retz’s line is a surgical reminder that incomprehensibility can be a political weapon, especially in a world where status clings to language like incense to cathedral stone. The insult (“the stupid”) is doing double duty: it flatters the speaker’s own acuity while sketching a public that confuses confusion with depth. In that reversal lies the sting. Arguments don’t have to be good. They just have to be hard.
De Retz wasn’t tweeting from the sidelines. As a cleric and a key player in the Fronde’s courtly turbulence, he lived inside an ecosystem where sermons, legalisms, and theological hair-splitting weren’t just ideas; they were instruments of leverage. The subtext is painfully modern: complexity is not automatically truth, but it reliably signals authority. If you can’t follow the reasoning, you’re more likely to defer to the person who claims to have it mapped. The “argument” becomes a social cue: submit.
The line also smuggles in a darker psychological insight: people rarely admit ignorance when power is at stake. They will nod along, not because they’ve been convinced, but because they’ve been socially cornered. In that sense, de Retz is less interested in stupidity as an innate trait than as a manipulable condition produced by hierarchy. Make discourse opaque enough, and you don’t need to win the debate; you can win the room.
De Retz wasn’t tweeting from the sidelines. As a cleric and a key player in the Fronde’s courtly turbulence, he lived inside an ecosystem where sermons, legalisms, and theological hair-splitting weren’t just ideas; they were instruments of leverage. The subtext is painfully modern: complexity is not automatically truth, but it reliably signals authority. If you can’t follow the reasoning, you’re more likely to defer to the person who claims to have it mapped. The “argument” becomes a social cue: submit.
The line also smuggles in a darker psychological insight: people rarely admit ignorance when power is at stake. They will nod along, not because they’ve been convinced, but because they’ve been socially cornered. In that sense, de Retz is less interested in stupidity as an innate trait than as a manipulable condition produced by hierarchy. Make discourse opaque enough, and you don’t need to win the debate; you can win the room.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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