Daily Inspiration Quote by James Reston

Reston’s line cuts with a reporter’s eye for what gets photographed and what gets edited out. Wealth performs. It has props: square footage, handbags, dinner reservations, the kind of frictionless time that reads as “deserved.” Conspicuousness isn’t accidental; it’s the point. Riches announce themselves as proof of competence, taste, even moral worth, because American culture keeps mistaking visibility for value.

Poverty, by contrast, is structured to disappear. It hides because it must: to avoid stigma, surveillance, pity that curdles into judgment. It hides because systems make it hard to be seen on your own terms. The poor are everywhere and still absent, rendered as statistics, “cases,” or cautionary tales rather than neighbors with names. Reston’s quiet twist is that hiding isn’t a personality trait; it’s a survival strategy in a society that punishes need with paperwork, suspicion, and shame.

The sentence also doubles as an indictment of media logic. Journalism reliably covers what is already legible: galas, markets, celebrity philanthropy, the visual language of success. Poverty is harder to stage and easier to look away from, so it becomes intermittent news, usually when it turns spectacular (a crisis, a riot, a scandal) rather than continuous reality. Reston isn’t romanticizing invisibility; he’s warning that democracies can’t solve what they refuse to look at, and the people with the least power are asked to become unseen just to get through the day.