“The great are never so great as we believe them to be, nor are we so small as we believe ourselves to be.”François de La Rochefoucauld · Maxime · 1665 · Maxima 446
The greatness of those above is often just the distance we see from below.
The maxim corrects two distortions at once. Looking up, we attribute to important people a grandeur that comes from their position rather than from themselves; looking inward, we shrink our own merits. A young man trembling before a meeting with a director often finds an ordinary person, while the director, for his part, doubts his own decisions. The distance lies mostly in our eyes.
Why it matters Useful before negotiations, interviews, or any situation where fear of authority makes us sell ourselves short.