"Passion makes idiots of the cleverest men, and makes the biggest idiots clever"
About this Quote
La Rochefoucauld distills a double-edged truth: passion unmakes prudence and manufactures it where none existed. The cleverest are not protected by intellect when desire takes hold; the dullest can suddenly see with startling clarity when moved by a consuming aim. He is not praising passion but revealing its power to reorder the hierarchy of faculties that people flatter themselves for possessing. Reason, calculation, and wit, so prized in the French salons he frequented, prove fragile in the face of love, ambition, resentment, or fear. Meanwhile, the energy of passion can concentrate a scattered mind, sharpen instincts, and embolden action.
The observation grows from the world he knew. A courtier and veteran of the Fronde, he watched shrewd players misjudge risks because their vanities were pricked, their romances inflamed, or their rivalries stoked. He also saw plodding men become formidable when anger or devotion lent them purpose. Human behavior, he suggests, is less governed by rational choice than by amour-propre, self-love, which commandeers the intellect and justifies whatever the heart has already decided. Passions are both distorting lenses and accelerants; they bend perception and hasten decision.
The aphorism is symmetrical, even democratic. Passion is a great leveler that undoes the supposed superiority of the clever while temporarily elevating the simple. It mocks the complacency of the wise and the fatalism about fools. Cleverness fails because it assumes a stable self whose plans can outthink appetite; folly becomes cunning when a single desire focuses attention on the one path that serves it.
There is a sober caution here. Do not trust brilliance to withstand temptation, and do not underestimate those animated by a fervor you dismiss. Anyone can be made ridiculous by the wrong passion; anyone can be made formidable by the right one. Understanding this instability is itself a form of wisdom, one less likely to be humiliated when the heart takes over the helm.
The observation grows from the world he knew. A courtier and veteran of the Fronde, he watched shrewd players misjudge risks because their vanities were pricked, their romances inflamed, or their rivalries stoked. He also saw plodding men become formidable when anger or devotion lent them purpose. Human behavior, he suggests, is less governed by rational choice than by amour-propre, self-love, which commandeers the intellect and justifies whatever the heart has already decided. Passions are both distorting lenses and accelerants; they bend perception and hasten decision.
The aphorism is symmetrical, even democratic. Passion is a great leveler that undoes the supposed superiority of the clever while temporarily elevating the simple. It mocks the complacency of the wise and the fatalism about fools. Cleverness fails because it assumes a stable self whose plans can outthink appetite; folly becomes cunning when a single desire focuses attention on the one path that serves it.
There is a sober caution here. Do not trust brilliance to withstand temptation, and do not underestimate those animated by a fervor you dismiss. Anyone can be made ridiculous by the wrong passion; anyone can be made formidable by the right one. Understanding this instability is itself a form of wisdom, one less likely to be humiliated when the heart takes over the helm.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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