Daily Inspiration Quote by Malcolm Muggeridge

Journalism’s highest virtue, Muggeridge suggests, is that it evaporates. The line lands like a benediction and a put-down at once: “Surely” carries the breezy confidence of someone who’s watched too many grand claims curdle, while “glory” is baited irony. He’s praising the craft by denying it permanence, which is exactly the kind of backhanded truth a veteran columnist would trust more than any heroic self-myth.

The intent is less anti-journalism than anti-pretension. Transience becomes a moral argument: today’s scoop is tomorrow’s fish wrap, and that disposability can function as a safeguard. If you know your words won’t be carved into marble, you may be freer to take risks, to correct yourself, to reflect the messy motion of events rather than freeze them into dogma. Muggeridge is also warning the press against mistaking visibility for significance. Journalism loves its own urgency; he’s puncturing the illusion that the day’s headline deserves eternity.

The subtext, sharpened by Muggeridge’s career in a century of propaganda, war, ideological fashion, and media expansion, is that the news cycle is both a cleansing fire and a con. Transience “glorifies” journalism because it keeps the enterprise honest, but it also lets it off the hook. If everything disappears, who is held accountable for yesterday’s certainties? The line is a cynical compliment: journalism matters most when it remembers it’s provisional.