Daily Inspiration Quote by Emily Greene Balch

Balch is quietly calling out the cozy privilege of spectatorship. The opening clause, "We speculate", lands like a reprimand aimed at the parlor habit of treating history as weather: something that happens to us, unfortunate or lucky, while we stand by and comment. Her pivot - "But" - does the real work. It flips the frame from prediction to responsibility, insisting that events are not just endured but, uncomfortably, co-authored.

The phrasing is deliberately incremental: "cause them or at least influence their course". She offers a ladder people can actually climb. If full-blown agency feels too grand, she leaves room for the smaller, more common truth that choices, votes, silence, and institutional routines still bend outcomes. That rhetorical generosity is strategic; it disarms the usual escape route ("I can't change anything") without demanding heroic myths.

Context matters: Balch lived through industrial upheaval, World War I, the rise of internationalist movements, and the failure of peace to sustain itself. As an educator and public intellectual, she’s speaking to citizens trained to think that studying the world is the same as engaging it. The line "We have not only to study them but to act" is a shot across the bow of academia and polite reform alike: analysis is not absolution.

The subtext is moral and modern: in complex systems, innocence is rarely pure. To watch is to participate. Balch’s insistence on action reads less like inspirational poster material and more like a demand that thinking earn its keep.