"You can't trust a promise someone makes while they're drunk, in love, hungry, or running for office"
About this Quote
A promise is a note on the future; its value depends on a clear mind, stable incentives, and the ability to deliver. Joe Moore stitches together four circumstances that make poor collateral: intoxication, infatuation, hunger, and campaigning. Each bends judgment, inflates confidence, and pulls attention toward immediate rewards while pushing cost and feasibility out of view.
Drunken pledges rise from a chemistry of lowered inhibition and heightened emotion. People feel braver, more generous, more certain, and they forget. Lovers speak in the glow of idealization. They may sincerely mean forever in the moment, but the moment is all they can see. Hunger narrows cognition into a tunnel; when scarcity bites, the mind bargains for relief and overcommits to obtain it. The campaign trail is a different kind of hot state. A candidate faces incentives to flatter every audience, assemble coalitions, and postpone the bill until after election day. It is not that the speaker is evil; the structure rewards exaggeration and penalizes candor.
The line lands as humor because it lumps universal human frailty with political ambition, yet the advice is practical. Promises deserve to be tested against interests, constraints, and the calm of a cooler hour. Ask whether the promiser will still benefit from keeping the pledge when desire has cooled, the stomach is full, and the votes are counted. Look for track record, for costs they accept up front, for mechanisms that bind them to their words. The deeper point is not cynicism but timing and accountability: commitments are reliable when they survive the morning after, the end of the honeymoon, the next meal, and the swearing-in. Trust, like credit, grows in sober daylight, not at midnight toasts, moonlit vows, empty tables, or rallies with confetti in the air.
Drunken pledges rise from a chemistry of lowered inhibition and heightened emotion. People feel braver, more generous, more certain, and they forget. Lovers speak in the glow of idealization. They may sincerely mean forever in the moment, but the moment is all they can see. Hunger narrows cognition into a tunnel; when scarcity bites, the mind bargains for relief and overcommits to obtain it. The campaign trail is a different kind of hot state. A candidate faces incentives to flatter every audience, assemble coalitions, and postpone the bill until after election day. It is not that the speaker is evil; the structure rewards exaggeration and penalizes candor.
The line lands as humor because it lumps universal human frailty with political ambition, yet the advice is practical. Promises deserve to be tested against interests, constraints, and the calm of a cooler hour. Ask whether the promiser will still benefit from keeping the pledge when desire has cooled, the stomach is full, and the votes are counted. Look for track record, for costs they accept up front, for mechanisms that bind them to their words. The deeper point is not cynicism but timing and accountability: commitments are reliable when they survive the morning after, the end of the honeymoon, the next meal, and the swearing-in. Trust, like credit, grows in sober daylight, not at midnight toasts, moonlit vows, empty tables, or rallies with confetti in the air.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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