Daily Inspiration Quote by David Hare

Hare’s line has the neat, dangerous snap of a stage provocation: two civilizations reduced to a pair of virtues, each flattering itself while quietly advertising its moral blind spot. “Strength” as paganism’s virtue isn’t just about muscles or conquest; it’s a shorthand for honor cultures where power is public, earned, performed. The subtext is that pagan strength has an honesty to it: it admits what it wants. It can be brutal, but it rarely pretends brutality is kindness.

Then Hare pivots to “obedience,” and the word choice matters. He doesn’t say humility, charity, or love - he chooses the virtue most easily weaponized. Obedience is social glue, a survival tactic for marginal communities, and a spiritual discipline. It’s also the gateway drug to institutional control. In one stroke, Hare suggests Christianity’s ethical revolution (the elevation of the meek, the inward turn, the suspicion of worldly power) and its historical complicity in hierarchy: churches, empires, moral majorities, the sanctification of submission.

As a playwright, Hare is less interested in theology than in what virtues do when they become scripts people perform. “Strength” and “obedience” are rival dramaturgies: one rewards self-assertion, the other rewards compliance; one makes heroes, the other makes martyrs. The line’s sting is its insinuation that modern politics still toggles between these ancient poses - the strongman fantasy versus the demand to fall in line - and that both can become alibis when conscience gets inconvenient.