Leadership Quote by Daniel Smith

Originality, in Daniel Smith's telling, is not the virtue; the use of it is the moral test. He draws a sharp line between the moment of creation, when an idea is still "pure", and the moment it becomes social currency. That pivot is the whole charge: the sin isn't ambition itself, it's the performance of virtue while quietly cashing in.

As a politician in the late 18th century, Smith would have lived inside a world where public service was constantly entangled with patronage, land speculation, and reputation-making. "Raise themselves up" reads like a jab at the self-made myth before it fully hardens into American scripture: the savvy operator who discovers or invents something, then markets it as proof of superior character. His phrasing suggests a culture where new institutions are being built and the rules are still negotiable, making "original" people unusually powerful, and unusually tempted.

The subtext is a warning about how novelty launders ego. New ideas arrive looking like gifts to the commons; in the wrong hands they become ladders, and the climber insists the ascent was for everyone. Calling it "insincere" is strategic. It's less a legal indictment than a reputational one: Smith targets the social glue of a young polity - trust - and names the breach as a kind of counterfeit authenticity.

The line works because it refuses to demonize creativity while still indicting the social theater that often surrounds it: the conversion of invention into moral superiority.