Daily Inspiration Quote by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley is needling the modern faith that prestige equals proficiency. The line lands because it flips an assumption that underwrites everything from Ivy League mystique to the managerial class: surely the most consequential roles are staffed by the most carefully trained people. Buckley’s cynicism is that complexity doesn’t summon rigor; it often dissolves it. The higher you climb, the more your “training” becomes vibes, connections, and a few institutional catechisms recited with confidence.

The phrasing does quiet satirical work. “Complicated and powerful” pairs technical difficulty with political leverage, suggesting the danger isn’t just incompetence but incompetence with authority. “Rudimentary” is the dagger: not merely imperfect preparation, but embarrassingly basic, like sending someone into a cockpit with a pamphlet. Buckley’s intent isn’t to praise common sense over expertise; it’s to expose a system where decision-makers are selected for pedigree, fluency, and ideological reliability, then handed problems that sprawl across economics, war, bureaucracy, and public psychology.

Context matters: Buckley’s mid-century American moment prized “best and brightest” governance, even as Vietnam and the expansion of the national security state revealed how quickly credentialed certainty could become catastrophic. The subtext is institutional self-protection. Complex jobs are kept complex, and power prefers improvisers who won’t challenge the machinery that elevated them. If preparation stayed truly demanding, it might also become democratizing - and power hates that.