Humor & Life Quote by Groucho Marx

Panic, punctured by privilege: Groucho’s line turns a medical emergency into a punchline about who gets rescued first in a status-obsessed society. The setup is pure crisis language - “I need a doctor immediately” - the kind of sentence that normally clears rooms and suspends jokes. Then he snaps the tension like a rubber band: don’t call a hospital, call a golf course. The laugh comes from the misdirection, but the staying power comes from what the misdirection implies: doctors, like everyone else, are most reliably located where leisure and class congregate.

Groucho’s intent isn’t just to be silly; it’s to stage a miniature indictment of social routing. In his world, the fastest path to competent help runs through a private playground. That’s the cynical wink: institutions meant for care are secondary to the informal networks of comfort. The “nearest golf course” is a shorthand for a certain kind of American priority system, where the well-connected aren’t merely healthier, they’re easier to reach.

The line also carries Groucho’s signature anti-authoritarian posture. He doesn’t flatter medicine’s dignity; he treats the doctor as a guy killing time between holes. That collapse of professional gravitas into casual recreation undercuts reverence and exposes the absurdity of how we imagine expertise: not as a public good, but as a perk orbiting the moneyed set.

It’s a one-liner that smuggles a class critique in a tuxedo, then asks you to laugh before you notice you’ve nodded.