Daily Inspiration Quote by John Mortimer

Mortimer’s jab works because it flatters and indicts at the same time. He’s not denying that people care about free speech; he’s pointing out how easily a market fantasy can be marketed as liberty itself. The line pivots on a sly substitution: “freedom” stops meaning protection from coercion and starts meaning access to a casino with good PR. By phrasing it as “has been made to sound,” Mortimer flags the real villain as rhetoric - the sales pitch that turns self-interest into a public virtue.

The subtext is class-conscious and distinctly British: a society that once treated civic rights as hard-won guardrails now treats financial risk-taking as the more glamorous expression of autonomy. “Make a fortune” is deliberately juvenile in its promise, a fairy tale of upward mobility that can be sold to people who will never cash the winnings. “Freedom of speech,” by contrast, is rendered almost dull: principled, procedural, and often inconvenient. Speech includes dissent, ugliness, and friction; speculation offers dopamine, status, and a sense of control, even when the control is illusory.

Context matters: Mortimer came of age in postwar Britain, watched Thatcher-era deregulation and the City’s cultural ascent, and understood how quickly public language can be captured by private ambition. His intent isn’t to romanticize speech as pure. It’s to warn that when a culture ranks profit-making as the sexier “freedom,” it quietly accepts a narrower idea of citizenship: not the right to speak, but the chance to win.