"The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days"
About this Quote
Youth, in Voltaire's hands, is less a season of innocence than a trapdoor: step wrong and the floor drops out for the rest of your life. The line sounds paternal, even tender ("my son"), but that intimacy is doing tactical work. Voltaire slips a hard lesson into the mouth of authority, then lets the reader feel the chill behind it: society pretends your future is an open road, yet it is arranged like a corridor with one locked door after another.
The sentence is engineered like a moral syllogism. "The first step" implies choice, agency, the romance of beginnings. Then comes the pivot: that single move "depends" the rest of our days. Voltaire compresses a whole social order into a verb. Your first job, first patron, first marriage, first public stance - these aren't merely personal milestones; in an ancien regime obsessed with rank, reputation, and gatekeeping, they are assignments. Opportunity is path-dependent. One misread room, one bad sponsor, and you don't just lose a moment; you lose your trajectory.
The subtext is Voltaire's quiet indictment of a world that punishes learning in public. Enlightenment talk loved "progress", but progress, for most people, was conditional - on class, connections, and the fragile theater of respectability. Read cynically, it's not advice to be bold; it's advice to survive. Read politically, it's a critique of systems that demand you get it right immediately, then call the outcome merit.
The sentence is engineered like a moral syllogism. "The first step" implies choice, agency, the romance of beginnings. Then comes the pivot: that single move "depends" the rest of our days. Voltaire compresses a whole social order into a verb. Your first job, first patron, first marriage, first public stance - these aren't merely personal milestones; in an ancien regime obsessed with rank, reputation, and gatekeeping, they are assignments. Opportunity is path-dependent. One misread room, one bad sponsor, and you don't just lose a moment; you lose your trajectory.
The subtext is Voltaire's quiet indictment of a world that punishes learning in public. Enlightenment talk loved "progress", but progress, for most people, was conditional - on class, connections, and the fragile theater of respectability. Read cynically, it's not advice to be bold; it's advice to survive. Read politically, it's a critique of systems that demand you get it right immediately, then call the outcome merit.
Quote Details
| Topic | New Beginnings |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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