There’s not a thing on earth that I can name,
So foolish, and so false, as common fame.

In these couplets Rochester dismisses “common fame” (public reputation, popular report) as both irrational (“foolish”) and untrue (“false”). The line reflects a Restoration courtier’s skepticism about the moral authority of public opinion: fame is shown as a social construction, produced by gossip, fashion, and partisan interest rather than by accurate judgment. Coming from a poet notorious for satire and self-lacerating candor, the sentiment also carries an edge of personal experience—reputation can be inflated, distorted, or weaponized. The epigram’s force lies in its absolutism: among all human follies, nothing surpasses the unreliability of what “everyone says.”