Humor & Life Quote by George Burns

Burns turns the grubby economics of show business into a clean, two-step joke: integrity, then invoice. The first clause flatters the audience's idealism - the fantasy that artists are driven by craft. The second clause snaps that fantasy in half with a shrug so blunt it becomes elegant. It works because the punchline isn't just "money matters"; it's that money is the only honest constant in an industry that sells sincerity for a living.

As a vaudeville-to-Hollywood lifer, Burns had seen every era's version of the same hustle: the script is sacred until the check clears. His genius is refusing the usual performer pose of tortured purity. Instead, he performs candor as charisma. The laugh comes from recognition: everyone negotiates with their principles; entertainers just do it on a stage where the hypocrisy is easier to spot.

There's also a stealth critique embedded in the self-deprecation. By admitting he'll do bad material for enough cash, Burns implies that bad scripts persist because the system rewards them - producers, studios, audiences, the whole machine. He makes himself the fall guy so he can indict the incentives without sounding preachy. The line lands with that Burns-era dryness: no angst, no moral sermon, just a businessman-comic calmly describing the terms of the deal. In the process, he offers a more bracing kind of authenticity: not purity, but transparency.