"I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong"
About this Quote
A perfect Goldwynism: a sentence that struts in wearing humility like a cheap tux, then quietly picks your pocket. “I’m willing to admit” signals openness, the kind of managerial magnanimity that invites dissent. Then the trapdoor opens: “may not always be right” is a technical concession that sounds like self-critique but carries no consequences. If he’s “not always right,” what is he? The punchline answers with imperial certainty: “never wrong.” It’s not logic; it’s power dressed up as wit.
Goldwyn, the Hollywood producer who helped industrialize American dreams, understood that authority in a studio system isn’t just enforced by contracts; it’s performed through language. The line works because it compresses the executive mindset into a paradox you can repeat at lunch. It’s funny, yes, but the humor is a control mechanism: laugh along and you’ve already accepted his premise that the argument is over. If you object, you become the humorless one, the person who “doesn’t get it,” which is another kind of losing in Hollywood.
There’s also a cultural snapshot here: the mogul era’s confidence, when taste and money were treated as interchangeable and certainty was a brand. The subtext is less “I’m infallible” than “I decide what counts as wrong.” Goldwyn’s genius was turning that raw dominance into a quotable aphorism, a little verbal product placement for the myth of the all-knowing producer.
Goldwyn, the Hollywood producer who helped industrialize American dreams, understood that authority in a studio system isn’t just enforced by contracts; it’s performed through language. The line works because it compresses the executive mindset into a paradox you can repeat at lunch. It’s funny, yes, but the humor is a control mechanism: laugh along and you’ve already accepted his premise that the argument is over. If you object, you become the humorless one, the person who “doesn’t get it,” which is another kind of losing in Hollywood.
There’s also a cultural snapshot here: the mogul era’s confidence, when taste and money were treated as interchangeable and certainty was a brand. The subtext is less “I’m infallible” than “I decide what counts as wrong.” Goldwyn’s genius was turning that raw dominance into a quotable aphorism, a little verbal product placement for the myth of the all-knowing producer.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Attributed to Samuel Goldwyn; listed on Wikiquote (Samuel Goldwyn) as: "I'm willing to admit that I may not always be right, but I am never wrong." No primary source cited on page. |
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