Wit & Attitude Quote by Johannes Sebastian Bach

Freedom, in this line, isn’t noble; it’s stubborn. “If I decide” frames idiocy as a choice rather than a lapse, and that small grammatical move turns the speaker from victim to author. The kicker is “on my own accord,” a phrase that sounds like personal agency but also like preemptive defense: don’t blame the crowd, don’t blame fashion, don’t blame authority. I’ll take the hit, but I’ll keep the steering wheel.

The subtext is a quiet refusal to be managed. It’s the kind of sentence you throw out when someone tries to “save” you from yourself, or when you sense the social pressure to perform intelligence as a form of obedience. Calling yourself an idiot first is a tactical self-own: it disarms critics and denies them the pleasure of naming you. It also smuggles in a second claim: even my worst decisions are mine, and that autonomy matters more than looking wise.

Contextually, attributing this to Bach is almost too delicious. The public image of Bach is discipline, counterpoint, devotion to craft and church employment - a man whose genius is often framed as dutiful architecture. If a composer like that says this, it reads as rebellion inside the rules: the employee who still insists on an inner sovereignty, the artist who knows that patronage, tradition, and piety can crowd out the self. Whether authentic or not, it works because it flips a moral hierarchy. Wisdom isn’t the highest virtue here; ownership is.