Daily Inspiration Quote by Plutarch

A civilized culture loves the idea that its best citizens started out as problems. Plutarch’s line flatters the unruly: the “wildest colts” aren’t defects to be culled but raw material worth the risk. That’s not sentimental optimism. It’s a hard-nosed moral psychology from a thinker steeped in Greek and Roman biographies, where greatness routinely arrives bundled with excess, pride, appetite, and a talent for making enemies.

The intent is practical. In a world that trains men for public life - governance, war, rhetoric - the question isn’t how to manufacture docility. It’s how to harness force without breaking it. A colt that kicks and bolts has energy, spirit, and appetite for motion; those traits, disciplined, become endurance and courage. The subtext is also a warning to educators and rulers: if you demand immediate obedience, you may get it, but you’ll breed mediocrity. The “best horses” are not born from perfect compliance; they’re shaped by skilled handling.

Context matters. Plutarch wrote under the Roman Empire, when Greek elites navigated a politics of constraint: ambition had to be expressed as character, not rebellion. The metaphor offers a socially acceptable defense of intensity, especially in young men, while still endorsing order. It’s a compromise between admiration for heroic temperaments and fear of what those temperaments can do when untrained.

The line endures because it dodges a modern binary. It doesn’t romanticize wildness as virtue. It treats wildness as power - morally neutral until someone proves capable of turning impulse into direction.