Daily Inspiration Quote by Hosea Ballou

Ballou’s line quietly detonates the vanity of rankings. Coming from a clergyman who preached Universalism in an America obsessed with merit, moral hierarchies, and salvation-by-status, the sentence reads less like a self-esteem poster and more like a theological correction. “Best” is a word that pretends to be objective while smuggling in a whole apparatus of comparison: who gets to judge, by what standard, and for whose benefit.

The grammar matters. “No such things” (even with the slip into plural) signals a category error: “best” isn’t merely hard to find; it’s the wrong tool for understanding persons. Individuals aren’t interchangeable products competing on a single scale. Ballou is pushing against the Calvinist-flavored worldview of his era, where worth and destiny could feel like a ladder with winners, losers, and the eternally damned. Universalism, by contrast, insists on inherent human value and the possibility of redemption without an elite caste of the spiritually superior.

There’s also a civic subtext. Early 19th-century America was inventing its own myths of exceptionalism and self-making. Declaring “best” illusory punctures the idea that a society can be neatly sorted into the deserving and the disposable. It’s not an argument against excellence; it’s an argument against turning excellence into a moral ranking of whole people.

Ballou’s intent, then, is pastoral and quietly radical: stop using comparative language to justify humiliation, exclusion, or spiritual gatekeeping. Measure actions if you must; refuse to reduce a person to a score.