Humor & Life Quote by Jimmy Durante

Durante’s line lands like vaudeville wisdom with a blackjack tucked inside: it’s funny because it’s true, and it’s true because it’s not exactly moral. “Be nice” sounds like kindergarten ethics until the punchline flips it into pure career survival. The sentence isn’t a hymn to kindness; it’s a map of gravity.

The intent is pragmatic, almost transactional. During the climb, power tempts people into treating others as scenery: stagehands, servers, junior colleagues, rivals. Durante’s subtext says those “extras” are actually permanent cast members in your story. Fame and status are temporary costumes; the community you move through is the long-running show. The threat isn’t spiritual karma, it’s social reality: reputations circulate faster than applause, and memory is sticky. When you fall, the people you dismissed become gatekeepers, employers, collaborators, and—most dangerously—witnesses.

Context matters. Durante came up in an entertainment ecosystem built on circuits, unions, bookers, and backstage labor, where everyone’s tomorrow depended on someone else’s goodwill. In that world, burning bridges wasn’t metaphorical; it was unemployment. The line also reflects a Depression-to-postwar America where upward mobility was romanticized, yet instability was common. “On your way down” isn’t pessimism so much as basic math: most careers peak, then taper.

The genius is its economy. One sentence compresses etiquette, politics, and humility into a single image of a staircase you don’t control. It laughs at ego while warning it: act like you’ll need people later, because you will.