Wit & Attitude Quote by William Penn

Penn lands the insult with the calm authority of someone who’s seen ego turn private weakness into public damage. “To be a man’s own fool” concedes a baseline of human fallibility: we all misjudge, overreach, indulge our appetites. That kind of folly is self-contained; it wastes your time, maybe your money, and mostly your own dignity. The real target is vanity, which Penn frames as a social contaminant. The vain man becomes “everybody’s” fool because his self-importance drafts the crowd into his performance. He requires witnesses, admiration, and constant correction-by-applause. When the applause doesn’t come, he escalates. Either way, other people pay.

The line works because it flips the usual moral math. Vanity isn’t just an internal sin; it’s a kind of theft. It steals attention, distorts decision-making, and forces others to manage the ego’s consequences. In Penn’s world - Quaker-inflected, wary of ostentation, and deeply invested in public trust - that’s not a personality quirk; it’s a civic hazard. Leaders can be merely mistaken in private, but a vain leader recruits institutions to serve his image. The court, the pulpit, the assembly: all become props.

Penn also smuggles in a shrewd social observation. Vanity doesn’t just make you ridiculous; it makes you usable. Everyone can pull the vain man’s strings - flatter him, bait him, sell him a mirror and call it a mission. The joke is sharp, but the warning is sharper: the person most convinced of his superiority is often the easiest to manipulate, and the hardest to govern responsibly.