Time & Perspective Quote by Groucho Marx

Fatalism gets mugged, then shaken down for lunch money. Groucho takes the solemn maxim "No man goes before his time" - a phrase designed to soothe grief by pretending the universe runs on schedule - and punctures it with a single workplace punchline. The bait is metaphysical comfort; the switch is office politics. Death, destiny, the grand clockwork of existence? Sure. But the real power that decides when you "go" is your boss watching the door.

The intent is classic Marx: expose how lofty ideas get domesticated by everyday hierarchy. By yoking mortality to quitting time, the joke shrinks the cosmic to the petty, revealing how modern life trains us to treat employers as minor deities. The subtext is cynical and oddly tender: people might not control fate, but they definitely negotiate permission. Even our exit from the building feels like a moral issue when authority is nearby.

Context matters. Groucho came out of vaudeville and into the industrial-and-postwar American office culture where "company man" obedience was both expected and mocked. His comedy often treated institutions as elaborate confidence games, with status and rules enforced by people who are just as ridiculous as everyone else. Here, the "boss leaves early" is a tiny act of liberation that rewrites the supposed natural order: when surveillance disappears, autonomy returns. The line works because it admits what etiquette usually hides: our lives are structured less by destiny than by whoever signs the timecard.