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Life's Pleasures Quote by Mark Mobius

"If you ever want to eat a tuna sandwich again, don't go to a tuna factory. I visited one where they had two lines: one was the human food line and one was the cat food line - and they didn't look any different"

About this Quote

Mobius is doing what seasoned financiers often do when they want to land a critique without sounding preachy: he turns a messy, systemic problem into an image you can taste. A tuna sandwich is ordinary, comforting, almost childlike. A tuna factory is industrial reality. The warning is less about squeamishness than about revelation - once you see how the sausage (or tuna) gets made, you lose the luxury of naive consumption.

The punchline is the two lines: "human food" and "cat food" that "didn't look any different". That detail is calibrated to spike distrust. It suggests that the categories we rely on - safety, quality, dignity - can be bureaucratic labels more than meaningful standards. Mobius isn't claiming cats and humans are literally eating identical product; he's highlighting how thin the visible evidence of oversight can be. The joke lands because it weaponizes a mundane distinction (pet vs. person) to expose how arbitrary "premium" can feel once you're staring at the same grey conveyor belt.

Context matters: as a businessman known for emerging markets investing, Mobius is speaking from a worldview shaped by supply chains, incentives, and weak enforcement. Factories are where brand narratives go to die. His intent is to inoculate you against marketing and assumptions - the investor's version of "trust, but verify". Beneath the humor is a harsher suggestion: in systems optimized for volume and margin, the burden of skepticism shifts to the consumer. The sandwich becomes a metaphor for everything you buy because you want to believe the label.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Mobius, Mark. (2026, January 15). If you ever want to eat a tuna sandwich again, don't go to a tuna factory. I visited one where they had two lines: one was the human food line and one was the cat food line - and they didn't look any different. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-ever-want-to-eat-a-tuna-sandwich-again-170476/

Chicago Style
Mobius, Mark. "If you ever want to eat a tuna sandwich again, don't go to a tuna factory. I visited one where they had two lines: one was the human food line and one was the cat food line - and they didn't look any different." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-ever-want-to-eat-a-tuna-sandwich-again-170476/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If you ever want to eat a tuna sandwich again, don't go to a tuna factory. I visited one where they had two lines: one was the human food line and one was the cat food line - and they didn't look any different." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-ever-want-to-eat-a-tuna-sandwich-again-170476/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Do not visit a tuna factory if you want to eat a tuna sandwich
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About the Author

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Mark Mobius (born August 17, 1936) is a Businessman from USA.

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