Leadership Quote by George Savile

Savile’s line is a neat little demolition of a comforting myth: that “great minds” are simply too lofty for commerce. He doesn’t deny the stereotype that famous philosophers would flail in business; he reframes it as an act of will. They’d be bunglers not because business is beneath their intelligence, but because they chose to treat it as beneath their dignity.

As an 18th-century politician, Savile is writing from inside a society where rank, virtue, and “disinterest” were marketed as moral credentials. To despise business was, for elites, a way of signaling purity: you weren’t compromised by trade, you weren’t tainted by profit, you could afford principles. Savile punctures that performance. “Despised it” isn’t incidental; it’s the engine. Contempt becomes self-fulfilling incompetence. If you treat a domain as ignoble, you refuse to learn its grammar, then you call your ignorance proof of your superiority.

The subtext is a warning about how intellectual cultures police status. Philosophers can convert disdain into an alibi, insulating themselves from practical accountability while still enjoying the prestige of wisdom. Politicians, meanwhile, love that division: it keeps thinkers in the realm of critique and away from the levers and ledgers that move policy.

Savile’s intent feels double-edged: a defense of business as a serious craft, and a jab at the vanity of those who mistake moral posture for mastery. It’s less pro-commerce than anti-snobbery.