Daily Inspiration Quote by George A. Smith

Power, Smith implies, doesn’t just tempt people into bad behavior; it tempts them into bad language. The “strong” here aren’t necessarily virtuous or even competent. They’re protected. They’ve moved through the world with enough authority, money, muscle, or social permission that consequences arrive late, if at all. That insulation produces a particular kind of verbal carelessness: promises made because it feels good to promise, threats issued because intimidation works, judgments delivered because no one in the room can safely talk back.

The line’s bite is in its moral psychology. Smith doesn’t accuse the strong of lying; he accuses them of being unsober. Sobriety is a spiritual and civic virtue: the disciplined awareness that words do things. They bind communities, ruin reputations, inflame crowds, and harden hierarchies. If you’ve never been “rebuffed” - never had a door closed in your face, never had your certainty punctured - you don’t develop the habit of weighing speech against reality. Uncertainty, for Smith, isn’t weakness; it’s an education.

As a 19th-century clergyman, Smith is also preaching into a culture of patriarchy and expanding American confidence, where leaders could mistake dominance for destiny. The subtext is a warning to the powerful disguised as counsel to the humble: watch the people who talk easiest. Eloquence without the corrective friction of failure becomes a kind of spiritual intoxication, and in that state, language turns from covenant into weapon.