Humor & Life Quote by Groucho Marx

Marriage, in Groucho Marx's hands, becomes a legal predicament disguised as romance. "I was married by a judge. I should have asked for a jury" lands because it flips the expected tone of a wedding: instead of vows and tenderness, we get procedure, guilt, and sentencing. A judge is supposed to be the neutral authority who makes things official. Groucho treats that authority as the first sign you're in trouble.

The joke's mechanics are clean. It hinges on a courtroom logic swap: marriage is framed as a trial, and the punchline implies conviction is inevitable unless you can persuade twelve strangers to save you. A judge suggests a single, unimpeachable verdict; a jury suggests wiggle room, sympathy, maybe even a hung decision. It's not just "marriage is hard". It's "marriage is a system that quietly removes your appeals process."

Subtext-wise, it's classic Marx: anarchic skepticism toward institutions, especially the ones that promise stability. The line also needles masculinity and domestic expectations of his era, when marriage was sold as a respectable endpoint and comedians mined the gap between that sales pitch and the lived reality of compromise, obligation, and power dynamics at home. Groucho's persona thrives on undercutting the ceremonial with the transactional, as if intimacy is another contract you signed without reading the fine print.

Context matters: this is old-school stage cynicism sharpened for mass entertainment, a one-liner that lets audiences laugh at their own fear that the "happily ever after" might just be a lifelong deposition.