Wit & Attitude Quote by William Shatner

Shatner’s genius here is that he treats humiliation as an inevitability, then yanks the reader out of moral panic about it. The line lands because it refuses the usual binary: either you keep your composure or you become a joke. He’s saying the joke is coming either way, so your only real choice is how you inhabit it.

The pants are doing double duty: literal slapstick and the bigger, modern fear of exposure. In celebrity culture, “taking your pants down” is the nightmare scenario - the clip that lives forever, the tabloid headline, the meme that outlasts your actual work. Shatner, who spent decades as both icon and punchline, speaks from inside that machinery. He’s been worshipped as Captain Kirk and mocked as a hammy relic; he knows dignity can’t be outsourced to reputation.

The subtext is craft. Dignity isn’t prudishness or control; it’s consent. It’s the difference between being stripped and choosing to strip because the moment calls for it. That’s why the second sentence matters more: even if you go full spectacle, dignity is still available, if you’re doing it on purpose and not begging the audience to look away.

It’s also a quiet defense of performance itself. Acting is sanctioned foolishness. Shatner frames embarrassment not as failure, but as material - something you can hold with steady hands, even when you’re half-naked.