Daily Inspiration Quote by Jock Sturges

There’s a mischievous diagnostic tool hidden in Sturges’ line: don’t argue with the accusation; audit the accuser. The “trembling finger” is doing more than pointing at “your pants.” It’s betraying anxiety, projection, a moral panic that arrives bodily before it becomes a coherent argument. Sturges’ move is to redirect attention from the alleged impropriety to the psychological machinery generating the alarm.

In context, that matters. Sturges is a photographer whose work with nude adolescents has long been a flashpoint in American culture wars: art versus obscenity, liberation versus exploitation, the camera as witness versus weapon. His quote reads like a preemptive defense against the reflexive suspicion that greets any depiction of youth and nudity. He’s not simply saying “prudish people are wrong.” He’s implying their certainty is often compensatory, a way to launder discomfort into righteousness.

The phrasing does the work. “Your pants” makes the scene intimate and faintly comic, collapsing the courtroom tone of public morality into something petty and personal. “Fairly woolly” is the killer softener: it avoids naming the ugly thing (repression, desire, hypocrisy) while making it sound faintly ridiculous, like mental lint. That evasiveness is strategic. It invites the reader to supply the diagnosis themselves, which is more potent than being told.

Still, the subtext is double-edged. The same maneuver that exposes prurient policing can also insulate the speaker from legitimate ethical critique. Sturges is betting that the loudest objections come from muddled minds rather than complicated, reasonable fears about power, consent, and gaze. That bet explains why the line lands as both witty and inflammatory.