Daily Inspiration Quote by Ellen Goodman

Goodman’s line has the snap of a newsroom corrective: values aren’t accessories, and treating them like accessories is a kind of moral incompetence disguised as sophistication. The verb choice does the heavy lifting. “Trendy” and “casually” evoke mall logic and social-scrolling attention spans; “traded in” borrows the language of commerce, suggesting a culture where convictions get swapped the way you upgrade a phone. In one sentence, she frames a whole ecosystem of public performance: people laundering self-interest through whatever ideology, cause, or identity happens to be in season.

The intent isn’t to scold change itself. It’s to indict the frictionless ease with which modern life encourages reinvention without accountability. Goodman, as a journalist, is writing from a world where reputations are built on stated principles and then stress-tested by events: elections, scandals, wars, economic shocks, civil-rights fights. Her point is that values only matter when they cost you something - when they pin you down, constrain your options, or force you to disappoint your tribe.

Subtext: if your “values” never inconvenience you, you may just be collecting moral merch. The sentence also quietly calls out institutions, not just individuals. Parties rebrand, corporations adopt glossy ethics campaigns, news cycles reward performative outrage and quick pivots. Goodman’s phrasing anticipates the later language of “virtue signaling,” but with a sharper target: not the display of virtue, but the disposability of it. Values, she implies, are supposed to be durable enough to survive being unfashionable.