Humor & Life Quote by W. C. Fields

Fields turns the language of moral progress into a pratfall. “Free of all prejudices” is the approved pose: enlightened, fair-minded, scrubbed clean of bias. Then he snaps the mask off with “I hate everyone equally,” exposing how easily virtue can be performed as a slogan while the underlying temperament stays sour, selfish, and amused by its own nastiness. The joke works because it weaponizes a familiar cultural aspiration (impartiality) and reveals its shadow version: if you refuse to discriminate, you can still refuse to care.

The intent is not a manifesto of misanthropy so much as a comic self-portrait that flatters the audience’s cynicism. Fields’ screen persona was the elegant curmudgeon: a man who meets polite society with a raised eyebrow and a stiff drink, puncturing sentimentality before it can ask anything of him. “Equally” is the key twist; it parodies the bureaucratic language of fairness, as if hatred were a public utility distributed without favoritism. That faux-principle lets the speaker sound consistent, even ethical, while admitting something ugly.

In context, Fields’ humor belonged to an early-20th-century American tradition of anti-hero comedy, built on distrust of institutions and impatience with sanctimony. The line also anticipates a modern move: hiding behind “I’m just equal-opportunity” as a get-out-of-empathy card. It’s funny because it’s sharp; it lands because it’s true enough to sting.