"The banalities of a great man pass for wit"
About this Quote
Genius has a way of turning small talk into scripture. Chase’s line needles a social reflex: we don’t just admire “great men,” we outsource our judgment to them. Their throwaway remarks, the verbal equivalent of a shrug, get polished into aphorisms because prestige acts like a microphone and a halo at once. The joke is that the content barely matters. Authority supplies the sparkle.
The phrase “pass for” does the real work. It suggests a counterfeit transaction, a bill accepted because the face on it is familiar. Chase isn’t attacking wit so much as the market that prices it. “Banalities” implies safe, pre-chewed truisms; the kind of ideas that require no risk and offend no patron. Yet spoken by someone anointed as “great,” the same truisms acquire the glow of insight. That’s not flattery; it’s a warning about how celebrity and power launder mediocrity.
The subtext is democratic and slightly bitter: cultures claim to value originality, then reward proximity to status. Think of how a famous novelist’s weakest interview lines get clipped into inspirational posters, or how a revered public intellectual can say something obvious about human nature and watch it circulate as if it were minted new. Chase, writing in a century obsessed with cults of personality and mass media amplification, is pointing to the oldest trick in the public square: elevate the speaker, and you can downgrade the thought.
It’s also a quiet rebuke to the “great man” myth itself. If banality reads as wit, the greatness may be less substance than projection.
The phrase “pass for” does the real work. It suggests a counterfeit transaction, a bill accepted because the face on it is familiar. Chase isn’t attacking wit so much as the market that prices it. “Banalities” implies safe, pre-chewed truisms; the kind of ideas that require no risk and offend no patron. Yet spoken by someone anointed as “great,” the same truisms acquire the glow of insight. That’s not flattery; it’s a warning about how celebrity and power launder mediocrity.
The subtext is democratic and slightly bitter: cultures claim to value originality, then reward proximity to status. Think of how a famous novelist’s weakest interview lines get clipped into inspirational posters, or how a revered public intellectual can say something obvious about human nature and watch it circulate as if it were minted new. Chase, writing in a century obsessed with cults of personality and mass media amplification, is pointing to the oldest trick in the public square: elevate the speaker, and you can downgrade the thought.
It’s also a quiet rebuke to the “great man” myth itself. If banality reads as wit, the greatness may be less substance than projection.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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