Humor & Life Quote by James Thurber

Thurber’s line is a comic shove in the ribs to anyone paralyzed by the fantasy of effortless brilliance. “Don’t get it right” reads like heresy until you hear the practical punchline: perfection is not a prerequisite for making anything; it’s often the excuse for making nothing. The joke lands because it flips the usual moral order. We’re trained to treat “right” as virtuous and “written” as merely done. Thurber turns completion into the real virtue and exposes correctness as a kind of vanity.

The intent is survival. Writing, for him, isn’t a ceremony; it’s a job with a deadline, a stubborn page, and a mind that would rather tinker forever than risk looking foolish. The subtext is permission: you are allowed to be clumsy in public, but only if you keep moving. “Written” also implies a later stage - revision - without saying it. Thurber isn’t rejecting craft; he’s insisting on sequence. Draft first, judge later. Get something on the page that can be argued with.

Context matters: Thurber came up in the magazine world (most famously The New Yorker), where wit had to arrive on time. A comedian’s authority here isn’t theoretical; it’s earned through repetition and failure. Humorists know the draft is where the bad jokes go to die and the good ones learn to breathe. The line’s economy mirrors its advice: a brisk sentence that refuses to romanticize the process, then nudges you back to work.