Daily Inspiration Quote by Mae West

Mae West turns moral panic into a flirtation with agency, and she does it with the breezy confidence of someone who knows the audience is already complicit. “Between two evils” sets up the oldest social script in the book: choose the lesser sin, behave yourself, pretend virtue is a math problem. West swerves at the last second. She doesn’t reject the premise that “evils” exist; she weaponizes it. If the options are bad either way, her logic implies, then the only meaningful choice left is novelty. Experience becomes the tie-breaker.

The line works because it’s not really about wickedness. It’s about control. West was a Hollywood star who built a brand on sexual frankness at a time when the industry was tightening the screws with censorship and “respectability.” The subtext is a wink at that regime: if you’re going to label my desires as immoral, I’ll treat your labels like a menu. “I always pick” is the quiet power move. She’s not pleading to be forgiven; she’s selecting.

It also carries the survival intelligence of a woman performing in a culture eager to police her. By framing transgression as curiosity, West makes risk sound like play, not pathology. That’s why the joke lands: it smuggles rebellion in the form of a one-liner, turning moral judgment into a setup and self-determination into the punchline.