Daily Inspiration Quote by Will Rogers

Golf shows up here as a kind of socially acceptable self-inflicted distraction, and Rogers knows exactly what he is doing by framing it as therapy with a sting. The first line flatters the game in the language of modern “self-care” before that term existed: it gets your mind off everything. Then he pivots, deadpan, into an insult disguised as modesty: “I have never been depressed enough to take up the game.” The joke isn’t that golf is hard; it’s that the people who choose it are already in a particular emotional neighborhood - restless, anxious, maybe even a little masochistic - and golf gives that misery a genteel costume.

The subtext is classic Rogers: a populist eye on status. In the early 20th century, golf was an aspirational leisure marker, tied to clubs, money, and a certain polished masculinity. By calling it something you do when you’re “depressed enough,” he punctures that prestige without sounding like a scold. He’s also diagnosing a useful civic function: rage redirected inward becomes politically convenient. If you’re “so sore at yourself” over a missed putt, you have less energy to “hate your enemies” - a sly line that turns personal frustration into a metaphor for social peace, or social sedation.

As an actor and public humorist, Rogers sold clarity with a grin. The craft here is misdirection: he starts with escape, lands on self-recrimination, and ends by suggesting golf can domesticate hostility. It’s comedy that flatters the audience’s intelligence while quietly asking whether our hobbies are relief - or just better-managed resentment.