"Remember, a chip on the shoulder is a sure sign of wood higher up"
About this Quote
The line lands like frontier aphorism and warning shot at once: what looks like swagger is often just a splintered symptom. Brigham Young takes the familiar image of a "chip on the shoulder" (a readiness to fight, a cultivated grievance) and flips it from moral posture into material evidence. If you have a chip, there was a blow that made it. The bravado isn’t proof of strength; it’s proof of where you’ve been struck.
As a nineteenth-century religious and civic leader, Young is policing temperament as much as behavior. The subtext is communal: in a society built on obedience, migration, and constant negotiation with hostile outsiders, resentment is combustible. A person carrying grievance becomes unpredictable, easier to provoke, easier to lead into faction. Young’s phrasing nudges listeners to read aggression diagnostically. Don’t be impressed by the performance; look "higher up" for the real issue - pride, insecurity, wounded status, maybe guilt. It’s a call to self-surveillance dressed as folk wisdom.
The intent is also political. Young knew that authority survives on narratives of unity. By reducing belligerence to a tell, he delegitimizes dissent without arguing doctrine. Your anger isn’t principled; it’s damage. That’s rhetorically efficient, and a little ruthless: it makes the aggrieved person responsible for their own injury, while inviting the community to treat indignation as character flaw rather than grievance with causes.
The genius is the economy. One image turns conflict into carpentry: chips don’t fall from nowhere, and neither does hostility.
As a nineteenth-century religious and civic leader, Young is policing temperament as much as behavior. The subtext is communal: in a society built on obedience, migration, and constant negotiation with hostile outsiders, resentment is combustible. A person carrying grievance becomes unpredictable, easier to provoke, easier to lead into faction. Young’s phrasing nudges listeners to read aggression diagnostically. Don’t be impressed by the performance; look "higher up" for the real issue - pride, insecurity, wounded status, maybe guilt. It’s a call to self-surveillance dressed as folk wisdom.
The intent is also political. Young knew that authority survives on narratives of unity. By reducing belligerence to a tell, he delegitimizes dissent without arguing doctrine. Your anger isn’t principled; it’s damage. That’s rhetorically efficient, and a little ruthless: it makes the aggrieved person responsible for their own injury, while inviting the community to treat indignation as character flaw rather than grievance with causes.
The genius is the economy. One image turns conflict into carpentry: chips don’t fall from nowhere, and neither does hostility.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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