Daily Inspiration Quote by David Hare

Hare’s line has the brisk snap of someone who’s watched a roomful of people pledge transformation and then wander off for a cigarette. By likening “sudden resolutions” to a barometer spike, he drags moral ambition out of the realm of character and into the realm of atmosphere. The punch is that a resolution feels like agency but functions like weather: reactive, unstable, often misread as meaning more than it does.

The intent isn’t to sneer at change itself; it’s to demote the grand announcement. A barometer doesn’t cause the storm, it only registers pressure. In Hare’s framing, the dramatic vow is a reading on internal conditions - guilt, fear, boredom, panic - rather than evidence of a durable plan. That’s the subtext: we treat our own proclamations as proof of seriousness because performance is cheaper than persistence. The metaphor also skewers the audience around the resolute person: observers love spikes, headlines, turning points. A steady forecast doesn’t make good theatre.

As a playwright, Hare is tuned to the way language can impersonate commitment. His characters (and his societies) often live on the border between conscience and convenience; the “sudden” decision becomes a way to feel ethically alive without paying the long cost of follow-through. Read in a modern political key, it lands just as hard: the surprise pivot, the apology, the newly announced principle - all of it may be less a conversion than a shift in pressure. The barometer isn’t destiny, but it’s a warning not to confuse drama with direction.