Many claim exploits without the slightest claim... Vanity is always objectionable, here it is despicable. These ants of honour go crawling about filching scraps of exploits. The greater your exploits the less you need affect them: content yourself with doing, leave the talking to others... Aspire rather to be a hero than merely to appear one.
Baltasar Gracián, 1647 (tr. Joseph Jacobs, 1892)
Claiming credit for things you did not actually do is among the most contemptible forms of vanity, and it is also self-defeating, because those who know the truth are left laughing at the pretender. There is an inverse relationship worth internalising: the greater your real accomplishments, the less you need to trumpet them, since substance speaks for itself and the loud self-promotion is the mark of someone filching scraps of honour he did not earn. The counsel is to content yourself with doing the thing and leave the talking to others, to give your deeds away rather than sell them with hired praise. The whole orientation is toward being rather than seeming: aspire to actually be the hero, which lasts, rather than to merely appear one, which collapses the moment reality is checked.
Practice
- Claim nothing you did not do; false credit is the most despicable vanity, and those who know the truth are left laughing (maxim 202 puts deeds over words).
- Trust substance to speak; the greater the real exploit, the less it needs advertising, so content yourself with doing and leave the talking to others.
- Aim to be rather than to seem; being the hero lasts, appearing one collapses the moment reality is checked.
Use this when
- Use this against the pull to inflate or borrow credit; the real accomplishment needs no inflation, and the borrowed one is exposed.
- Use it to orient effort toward doing over advertising; give your deeds away and let others do the praising.
Ignore this when
- Don't confuse this with hiding your genuine achievements; letting real work be known is fine and even necessary (maxim 277 still says display), but claiming false ones never is.
- Don't stay so silent that credit is entirely stolen from you; the rule is against false claims, not against fair acknowledgment of what you did.
A picture of it
Two colleagues finish a hard year. The first inflates his part in every success and covertly claims scraps of others' work, advertising a record larger than the one he actually built, and those who know the real story come to regard him with contempt. The second simply does the work and lets it speak, claiming nothing she did not do, and her genuine record, needing no trumpet, earns the standing the first one only performed. The pretender's borrowed exploits collapse the moment anyone checks; the real ones stand on their own. One auditioned as a hero and was seen through; the other was one, and did not have to say so.
Claim only what you did, and let the deeds do the talking. The greater the exploit, the less it needs advertising; be the hero, do not audition as one.