QuoteProject
The flattery of posterity is not worth much more than contemporary flattery, which is worth nothing.
Jorge Luis Borges
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Flattery from future generations holds little value, similar to the empty compliments of the present.

In this quote, Jorge Luis Borges suggests that the praise we seek from others, whether it comes from our contemporaries or from future generations, is ultimately insignificant. Both forms of flattery are seen as lacking true substance or worth, emphasizing the idea that one's true value lies beyond the fleeting opinions of others.

Themes

FlatteryPosterityContemporaryWorthValue

In practice

Example use cases

In a graduation speech emphasizing individuality over public perception.

More from Jorge Luis Borges

You can't measure time by days, the way you measure money by dollars and cents, because dollars are all the same while every day is different and maybe every hour as well.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
The execution was set for the 29th of March, at nine in the morning. This delay was due to a desire on the part of the authorities to act slowly and impersonally, in the manner of planets or vegetables.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
This felicitous supposition declared that there is only one Individual, and that this indivisible Individual is every one of the separate beings in the universe, and that these beings are the instruments and masks of divinity itself.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead
Let neither tear nor reproach besmirch this declaration of the mastery of God who, with magnificent irony, granted me both the gift of books and the night.
Jorge Luis BorgesRead

Similar quotes

Everywhere you will find that the wealth of the wealthy springs from the poverty of the poor.
Peter KropotkinRead
Triviality is evil - triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly is what is radically evil.
Theodor AdornoRead
I make myself strict rules in order to correct my nature. But it is my nature that I finally obey.
Albert CamusRead
A corporation is organized as a system - it has this department, that department, that department... they don't have any meaning separately; they only can function together. And also the body is a system. Society is a system in some sense. And so on.
David BohmRead
The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs.
Friedrich August Von HayekRead
For in every adult there dwells the child that was, and in every child there lies the adult that will be.
John ConnollyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.