"People in very high places suddenly fall, and we are always surprised because we don't factor in the basic element that they're humans and, therefore, they are flawed and have weaknesses"
About this Quote
Power has a way of laundering its owners into symbols, then acting shocked when the symbol bleeds. Carlisle Floyd is pointing at that cultural sleight of hand: we elevate people in “very high places” until they read as institutions rather than bodies, biographies, and bad days. When they “suddenly fall,” the surprise isn’t evidence of their exceptional downfall so much as our collective refusal to do the obvious math: humans plus pressure equals failure, sooner or later.
The line’s quiet bite is in “basic element.” It’s not a grand theory; it’s kindergarten anthropology. Floyd suggests that scandal culture, hero worship, and even reverence in the arts and politics depend on forgetting what we know. The surprise is the tell: it reveals that we’ve been buying a story of infallibility, one that high status actively encourages. “Very high places” aren’t just physical or professional altitude; they’re social insulation. The higher someone climbs, the more their weaknesses can be hidden, enabled, or reframed as “eccentricity” until the structure can’t hold.
As a composer, Floyd likely had a front-row seat to the dynamics of prestige: patrons, boards, critics, star performers, and the genteel myth that greatness equals virtue. His phrasing doesn’t excuse collapse; it indicts the audience, the institutions, and the myth-making machinery that turns flawed people into untouchable narratives. The quote lands because it flips the drama: the real failure isn’t that powerful people are weak. It’s that we keep pretending they aren’t, then feign astonishment when reality returns with receipts.
The line’s quiet bite is in “basic element.” It’s not a grand theory; it’s kindergarten anthropology. Floyd suggests that scandal culture, hero worship, and even reverence in the arts and politics depend on forgetting what we know. The surprise is the tell: it reveals that we’ve been buying a story of infallibility, one that high status actively encourages. “Very high places” aren’t just physical or professional altitude; they’re social insulation. The higher someone climbs, the more their weaknesses can be hidden, enabled, or reframed as “eccentricity” until the structure can’t hold.
As a composer, Floyd likely had a front-row seat to the dynamics of prestige: patrons, boards, critics, star performers, and the genteel myth that greatness equals virtue. His phrasing doesn’t excuse collapse; it indicts the audience, the institutions, and the myth-making machinery that turns flawed people into untouchable narratives. The quote lands because it flips the drama: the real failure isn’t that powerful people are weak. It’s that we keep pretending they aren’t, then feign astonishment when reality returns with receipts.
Quote Details
| Topic | Humility |
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