Life & Wisdom Quote by Junius

Belief, Junius suggests, doesn’t collapse under ridicule; it can harden into armor. The line is a neat inversion of Enlightenment confidence that reason will naturally dissolve bad ideas. Instead, absurdity becomes a feature, not a bug: the more a doctrine offends common sense, the more it functions as a loyalty test. If you can swallow the impossible, you’ve proven you belong - to the faction, the sect, the party, the grievance.

The intent is pointedly political. Junius, the famously anonymous polemicist of late-1760s Britain, wrote in an era when power was argued through pamphlets, patronage, and public scandal. In that world, persuasion often wasn’t about evidence; it was about identity and domination. Calling a belief “absurd” isn’t merely an intellectual critique, it’s a social weapon - and Junius is warning that this weapon can backfire. Mockery feeds martyrdom; contradiction can be rebranded as persecution; the jeer becomes proof that “they” fear the truth.

There’s cynicism here, but also tactical clarity. He’s diagnosing a psychology of commitment: once someone is “determined,” facts stop being inputs and start being threats. Absurdity then supplies a perversely satisfying certainty, because it requires sacrifice of doubt. The subtext is as much about the speaker’s opponents as it is about the speaker’s own side: if you want to win arguments, don’t confuse humiliating people with changing their minds.