Life & Wisdom Quote by George P. Baker

Baker opens with a slyly forgiving premise: most of us, at some point, want to be someone else. The sentence is built like a trap for self-exceptionalism. By saying "rare is the human being", he frames impersonation not as a quirky vice but as the default setting of consciousness. The inclusive sweep of "immature or mature" matters: pretending is not merely a childish phase, but a lifelong reflex that survives education, status, even self-knowledge.

The verb choice is the tell. "Impulse" recasts disguise as something bodily, quick, almost involuntary. That softens moral judgment while sharpening psychological accuracy: we don't always invent alternate selves because we're deceitful; we do it because identity is cramped, and social life is a stage with roles we didn't write. The gendered "he" dates the line, but the claim doesn't depend on it; if anything, it exposes the era's assumption that "human" is male, which makes the insight about role-playing even more pointed. Baker is describing a world where performance is expected and certain performances are socially authorized.

Contextually, Baker was a major figure in American drama and rhetoric, and you can hear the theater in the phrasing. The line reads like a playwright's diagnosis of why characters work: we recognize ourselves in their masks. Subtext: authenticity is not the opposite of performance. It's often assembled through it. Pretending, Baker implies, is rehearsal for becoming.