"A bachelor is a man who never makes the same mistake once"
About this Quote
A bachelor, in Ed Wynn's world, is less a marital status than a survival strategy: the guy who keeps moving fast enough to dodge consequences. The joke works because it hijacks the language of self-improvement. "Never makes the same mistake once" sounds like the motto of a disciplined adult, until you realize the "mistake" is commitment itself. Wynn flatters the bachelor as a quick study while quietly admitting he may be repeating plenty of mistakes, just with different names, different apartments, different alibis.
The subtext is classic early-to-midcentury American comedy: marriage is depicted as both inevitable trap and social expectation, while bachelorhood gets framed as jaunty resistance. Wynn isn't mounting a critique of domestic life so much as offering a pressure valve. In an era when the married household was marketed as the gold standard of stability, the wisecrack provides a culturally acceptable way to express dread, ambivalence, or plain boredom without confessing to it outright. It's cynicism dressed as a rimshot.
Context matters: Wynn came up through vaudeville and radio, where a clean, quickly legible premise had to land in seconds. The bachelor archetype was instantly recognizable, and "mistake" is the perfect slippery word, letting audiences project their own fears onto it: lost freedom, financial obligation, emotional exposure. The line keeps its edge because it doesn't attack marriage directly; it celebrates evasiveness, then leaves you to notice how thin the victory feels.
The subtext is classic early-to-midcentury American comedy: marriage is depicted as both inevitable trap and social expectation, while bachelorhood gets framed as jaunty resistance. Wynn isn't mounting a critique of domestic life so much as offering a pressure valve. In an era when the married household was marketed as the gold standard of stability, the wisecrack provides a culturally acceptable way to express dread, ambivalence, or plain boredom without confessing to it outright. It's cynicism dressed as a rimshot.
Context matters: Wynn came up through vaudeville and radio, where a clean, quickly legible premise had to land in seconds. The bachelor archetype was instantly recognizable, and "mistake" is the perfect slippery word, letting audiences project their own fears onto it: lost freedom, financial obligation, emotional exposure. The line keeps its edge because it doesn't attack marriage directly; it celebrates evasiveness, then leaves you to notice how thin the victory feels.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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