Life & Wisdom Quote by Wendell Mayes

Power, Mayes reminds us, is still just a body in a chair. The line lands because it punctures grandeur with anatomy: the “most exalted throne” gets dragged down to the lowest-common-denominator fact of human existence. That sudden drop is the joke, but it’s also the diagnosis. Authority looks like marble and gold from a distance; up close it’s sweat, nerves, digestion, fear. The throne doesn’t sanctify the person. The person, with all their ordinary fragility, is what’s on display.

The phrasing “Some smart man once said” is a screenwriter’s sleight of hand. It borrows the aura of inherited wisdom while refusing accountability, like a character tossing off a proverb to sound worldly. Mayes isn’t chasing attribution; he’s signaling that this is an old truth we keep needing to relearn because pageantry keeps winning the PR battle. By invoking an unnamed “smart man,” he also quietly mocks the masculine tradition of authority: men quoting men about power while pretending it’s impersonal and inevitable.

Subtextually, it’s a warning and a comfort. A warning to leaders: your status is thinner than you think, and history’s glare is unforgiving. A comfort to everyone else: the distance between “them” and “us” is smaller than the architecture suggests. Coming from a screenwriter, it reads like dialogue meant to deflate a king, a president, a studio boss - anyone riding symbolism to avoid responsibility. Power isn’t a halo. It’s a seat, and it’s yours to own or to disgrace.