Humor & Life Quote by Steven Wright

Steven Wright’s line works because it takes a worn-out moral metaphor and commits to it with bureaucratic clarity. “God’s going to come down” sets up the familiar thunderbolt scenario, then he swerves into the mundane: a traffic stop. Civilization isn’t damned; it’s “pulled over.” The joke isn’t just that divine judgment gets reduced to a cop routine - it’s that our sense of collective panic already sounds like that. We talk about society “moving too fast,” “losing control,” “needing to slow down,” as if history were a car with a shaky alignment and a caffeine problem.

The intent is comic deflation: replace apocalyptic grandeur with petty, procedural enforcement. Wright’s deadpan persona makes the absurd feel oddly plausible, like a dream you almost believe until you wake up. “For speeding” is the perfect charge because it’s both trivial and universal. Everyone’s guilty, and everyone knows the ritual: the flashing lights, the helpless negotiation, the hope for a warning. It casts humanity as a driver who knows the rules but treats them as suggestions until the consequences arrive.

Subtext: the modern world’s acceleration - technology, consumption, news cycles, ambition - has crossed from progress into recklessness. The “ticket” implied here isn’t just punishment; it’s accountability, a forced moment of stillness. In a culture obsessed with momentum, Wright imagines the ultimate authority demanding the one thing we refuse to do: slow down.