Daily Inspiration Quote by Erica Jong

Advice, in Erica Jong's telling, isn't a lantern in the dark; it's a receipt we demand for a decision we've already made. The line works because it flips the usual moral hierarchy. We like to imagine ourselves as seekers of wisdom, rational actors gathering data. Jong suggests we're often doing something more theatrical: shopping for permission, outsourcing the discomfort of agency to a friend, a therapist, a columnist, a stranger on the internet.

The subtext is about ambivalence and self-deception. "We already know the answer" admits an internal verdict; "but wish we didn't" reveals the emotional bribe. The advice-seeker isn't ignorant, they're conflicted. They want the responsible choice to also be the pleasurable one, the kind choice to also be the clean break, the brave move to also be painless. Advice becomes a way to delay the moment when desire and consequence have to meet. If someone else tells us what to do, we get to pretend the fallout wasn't ours.

Jong's context matters: a novelist associated with second-wave feminism and candid interiority, she built a career on puncturing the polite fictions around sex, freedom, and selfhood. This aphorism carries that same impulse. It's less a knock on advice-givers than a diagnosis of how people manage guilt and longing. In an era of endless "life hacks" and hot takes, it lands even harder: we don't lack guidance; we lack the courage to admit we're looking for absolution.