Daily Inspiration Quote by Frank Moore Colby

There is a special kind of cruelty in calling someone small-minded and then granting them a “consolation prize”: their opinions are so inconsequential they can be swapped out like hats without slowing anything down. Frank Moore Colby, an educator by trade, delivers the line with the dry satisfaction of a teacher who’s watched countless students (and colleagues) mistake mental motion for intellectual growth. The jab lands because it reframes “changing your mind” - typically a moral badge of humility - as a form of frivolity when it’s unmoored from depth, stakes, or responsibility.

The intent is corrective, almost disciplinary. Colby isn’t praising flexibility; he’s mocking the kind that comes from having no real commitments, no serious framework to test new ideas against. A “little mind” can pivot endlessly because it’s never carrying much weight. The subtext: conviction isn’t automatically virtue, but neither is perpetual openness. If your beliefs are so lightweight that revision feels like entertainment, it’s not enlightenment - it’s a hobby.

Context matters, too. As an educator writing in an era that prized “progress” and public reason, Colby aims at a recognizable figure: the dilettante, the contrarian, the person who treats opinions as social currency. The line flatters the reader into self-scrutiny while offering a quietly brutal comfort: at least the unserious can’t sabotage the serious. The sting is that it’s not a compliment; it’s containment.