Daily Inspiration Quote by Charles de Montesquieu

Talk is the oldest way to hide an empty mind in public. Montesquieu’s jab lands because it targets not just long-winded speakers, but a whole political technology: verbosity as camouflage. The line works like a tight little see-saw. “Depth” suggests substance, reason, and the hard work of thought; “length” suggests performance, stamina, and the ability to occupy time. The insult isn’t merely that orators bore us. It’s that they use duration as a substitute for justification, banking on fatigue, deference, and social etiquette to carry the argument where evidence won’t.

As an Enlightenment philosopher living amid court culture and the lingering prestige of classical rhetoric, Montesquieu knew how persuasion often outran truth. In salons, parliaments, and pulpits, the successful speaker was frequently the one who could sound authoritative long enough for listeners to confuse confidence with correctness. His phrasing is elegantly unforgiving: “make up for” implies an accountant’s trick, as if meaning were a deficit that could be balanced by adding more words to the ledger.

The subtext is a warning about power. Oratory isn’t just communication; it’s a tool for governing attention. Long speeches can create the illusion of complexity, drown out dissent, and reframe weakness as seriousness. Montesquieu, who championed limits on authority and admired institutional checks, offers a compact check of his own: a skepticism toward rhetorical overflow. The line remains modern because the tactic remains modern. When a speaker can’t deepen an idea, they can always stretch it.