Daily Inspiration Quote by William E. Geist

Nostalgia gets top billing, but the punchline tells you who’s really driving. Geist’s line is built like a polite memoir sentence that suddenly admits its own bribery: we’re “drawn” by “warm nostalgic feelings,” yes, and also by the two-word solvent that dissolves adult self-control. By naming “Open Bar” as if it were a romantic incantation, he collapses the gap between sentimental self-image and the simpler, cheaper truth. It’s not that nostalgia is fake; it’s that it’s conveniently flammable once alcohol is free.

The intent is classic journalistic humor: a quick, knowing skewering of the way people narrate their motives to themselves. “Warm nostalgic feelings” sounds like something you’d say to justify showing up at a reunion, fundraiser, or industry event where you half-expect to be bored and mildly judged. Then Geist turns the camera a few inches to the side and catches the actual incentive structure. The “two sweet little words” phrasing mocks advertising language and romantic cliché at the same time, framing a corporate perk as a love interest.

Contextually, it lands in a late-20th-century social world where networking and ritual gatherings run on soft coercion: attend, be seen, perform affection for “the place.” The open bar is the social grease and the payoff. Geist isn’t moralizing; he’s puncturing. The joke works because it tells the truth people already suspect about themselves, but rarely volunteer out loud.