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Justice & Law Quote by Bob Hope

"Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong"

About this Quote

Bigamy is an old-school scandal recast as a tidy linguistic trick: “two rites” sounds like a church bulletin, then snaps into “two rights” with a groan-worthy inevitability that’s exactly the point. Bob Hope’s line works because it treats marriage less as sacred bond than as a social system with rules so familiar you can parody them in a single pun. The joke isn’t merely that bigamy is illegal; it’s that the institution is so wrapped in ceremony, paperwork, and moral posture that doubling the ceremony becomes its own punchline.

Hope’s intent is classic mainstream comedy: take a taboo subject (sex, infidelity, duplicity) and launder it through wordplay so it can land in a living room without causing a family fight. “Crime” gives it edge; “rites” gives it respectability; the collision is where the laugh lives. The subtext is mildly cynical but not rebellious: marriage is serious enough to be policed, yet absurd enough to be mocked. In the Hope universe, institutions aren’t toppled; they’re teased.

Context matters. Hope rose in an era when American entertainment navigated tight moral codes and broadcast standards, so jokes often wore tuxedos. His comedy specialized in winking at propriety rather than shattering it. This line is a perfect artifact of that approach: it invites the audience to feel sophisticated for catching the pun while reassuring them that the ultimate verdict remains conventional. The transgression is momentary; the social order, like the wordplay, clicks back into place.

Quote Details

TopicPuns & Wordplay
Source
Later attribution: Watching Father Brown (Sandra K. Sagala, 2023) modern compilationISBN: 9781476650104 · ID: GRXYEAAAQBAJ
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... Bob Hope who joked that " bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong . " • Bunty compared the O'Leary home to Sodom and Gomorrah , two cities full of sinful people mentioned in the Bible that were destroyed by God ( Genesis ...
Cite

Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Hope, Bob. (2026, February 18). Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/bigamy-is-the-only-crime-where-two-rites-make-a-30250/

Chicago Style
Hope, Bob. "Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong." FixQuotes. February 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/bigamy-is-the-only-crime-where-two-rites-make-a-30250/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Bigamy is the only crime where two rites make a wrong." FixQuotes, 18 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/bigamy-is-the-only-crime-where-two-rites-make-a-30250/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2026.

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Bigamy: Two Rites Make a Wrong - Bob Hope's Wit
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About the Author

Bob Hope

Bob Hope (May 29, 1903 - July 27, 2003) was a Comedian from USA.

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