Time & Perspective Quote by Danny DeVito

DeVito’s sentence lurches forward like someone thinking out loud because he’s trying to outrun the cynicism baked into the moment. He starts with a defensive swipe - “I didn’t do it because of the underlying greed that’s prevailing” - acknowledging the default suspicion attached to celebrity moves: there’s always a brand to build, a deal to close, a halo to polish. The phrasing is messy on purpose. It’s not a polished PR line; it’s a guy insisting, almost impatiently, that motive still matters even when the culture has decided everything is transactional.

Then he pivots: “but it is about greed.” That’s the tell. He’s not denying the system; he’s indicting it. DeVito’s framing suggests a world where greed is the ambient weather, not a personal quirk. In that climate, “doing the right thing” becomes less a moral identity than a tactical choice: timing, leverage, consequence. “Using your clout when you have it” is the most revealing clause because it treats fame as a finite resource with a moral use-by date. Power isn’t just something you possess; it’s something you spend.

The subtext is a critique of quiet complicity. If you have access, attention, money, a microphone, and you wait for perfect conditions or perfect purity, you’re effectively siding with whatever “prevailing” force is already winning. DeVito doesn’t sound saintly; he sounds practical. That practicality is the point: in a greed-soaked system, ethics has to be enacted, not advertised, and the only question that really matters is his last one - “what for and what reason” - a demand that public gestures come with actual stakes.