Daily Inspiration Quote by George Farquhar

A neat little line that flatters authority while quietly mocking it. Farquhar, a Restoration-era dramatist who lived on the stage’s oxygen of hypocrisy and social climbing, puts obedience in the mouth of “those who know the least” and lets the insult do the work. The sentence has the posture of a proverb, but its sting is theatrical: compliance is not presented as virtue; it is presented as ignorance wearing good manners.

The intent is double-edged. On one level, it can be read as a cynical rule for managing people: the less someone understands the system, the easier they are to govern. That lands in a Britain still sorting out power after revolution and succession crises, where deference was both social lubricant and survival tactic. On another level, it’s a jab at the kind of order that depends on not being questioned. “Obey the best” sounds like a compliment to leadership until you notice Farquhar has smuggled in the mechanism: not wisdom, not consent, but informational scarcity.

Subtextually, the line stages a social bargain. The “least” get the comfort of clarity: rules, routines, someone else steering. The “best” (which may mean the upper classes, the self-appointed, or simply the loudest) get stability and control, without having to earn it through argument. Farquhar’s brilliance is that he refuses to moralize outright. He just points to an uncomfortable truth about hierarchy: obedience often isn’t proof of legitimacy; it’s proof of asymmetry.