Daily Inspiration Quote by Terence

A civilization doesn’t just rot from bad ideas; it rots from good rhetoric in bad hands. Terence’s line, written for the Roman stage, lands like a sideways glance at an audience that thinks it’s there for entertainment, not indictment. “Demand” is the poison word. This isn’t merely that liars exist, or that power distorts truth. It’s that the market actively rewards the talent for moral inversion. Someone is hiring.

Terence, a comic playwright with a keen eye for social games, frames persuasion as a professional skill detached from virtue. “Men who can make wrong appear right” aren’t described as brutes. They’re technicians: advocates, spin doctors, clever talkers at dinner parties, anyone fluent in the language of respectability. The subtext is brutal: wrongdoing doesn’t need to win arguments on substance; it only needs to win on presentation. Appearance is enough because institutions and crowds often prefer comfort to clarity.

In Roman life, this cuts close to law courts and patronage, where status and eloquence could outweigh facts. Onstage, comedy thrives on mistaken identities and reversed roles; Terence weaponizes that theatrical logic against public life itself. He implies that society has become a kind of ongoing performance, with moral truth treated as just another costume change. The line works because it accuses the audience without naming them, inviting laughter that curdles into recognition: if there’s demand, someone is paying, applauding, voting, or looking the other way.