"The world is not fair, and often fools, cowards, liars and the selfish hide in high places"
About this Quote
McGill’s line lands like a blunt PSA, but its bite comes from the quiet accusation underneath: our cultural obsession with merit is a comforting story, not a reliable description of how power works. “The world is not fair” is the familiar setup; the real move is the inventory of villains and the insinuation that they don’t just exist, they thrive where we’re trained to look for competence and virtue.
The phrasing “hide in high places” matters. It suggests not only that status can camouflage character, but that institutions themselves can function as cover. “High places” reads as office suites, pulpits, politics, celebrity, even the respectable corners of civic life where reputations are curated and scrutiny is managed. The list - fools, cowards, liars, the selfish - isn’t poetic; it’s prosecutorial. Each type signals a different failure: incompetence, moral weakness, dishonesty, predatory self-interest. Together they sketch a system where harm isn’t always dramatic evil; it’s often banal, protected, and rewarded.
As a contemporary self-help-adjacent author, McGill is aiming less for philosophical fatalism than for a hardening of the reader’s expectations. The intent is pragmatic: stop assuming authority equals integrity; stop interpreting unfair outcomes as personal deficiency; start reading power with skepticism. The subtext is a warning about misplaced trust - and an invitation to ethical vigilance. If the worst people can “hide” above us, then looking up isn’t enough. We have to look through.
The phrasing “hide in high places” matters. It suggests not only that status can camouflage character, but that institutions themselves can function as cover. “High places” reads as office suites, pulpits, politics, celebrity, even the respectable corners of civic life where reputations are curated and scrutiny is managed. The list - fools, cowards, liars, the selfish - isn’t poetic; it’s prosecutorial. Each type signals a different failure: incompetence, moral weakness, dishonesty, predatory self-interest. Together they sketch a system where harm isn’t always dramatic evil; it’s often banal, protected, and rewarded.
As a contemporary self-help-adjacent author, McGill is aiming less for philosophical fatalism than for a hardening of the reader’s expectations. The intent is pragmatic: stop assuming authority equals integrity; stop interpreting unfair outcomes as personal deficiency; start reading power with skepticism. The subtext is a warning about misplaced trust - and an invitation to ethical vigilance. If the worst people can “hide” above us, then looking up isn’t enough. We have to look through.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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