"No one wants advice - only corroboration"
About this Quote
Steinbeck’s line lands like a friendly jab that still leaves a bruise. “No one wants advice” rejects the comforting fiction that people come to us for wisdom; “only corroboration” names the real transaction: tell me I’m right, tell me my mess makes sense, tell me my instincts deserve to win. It’s not just cynicism. It’s a diagnosis of how ego disguises itself as openness.
The craft is in the word “only.” Steinbeck isn’t claiming advice is useless; he’s saying our appetite for it is usually performative. We solicit guidance the way a lawyer asks questions on cross-examination: not to learn, but to build a case we’ve already decided. “Corroboration” is legal language, which sharpens the subtext. We aren’t searching for truth; we’re collecting testimony that supports the story we prefer about ourselves.
In Steinbeck’s world, that rings especially true. His fiction is crowded with people cornered by circumstance, pride, poverty, and social pressure - the kinds of forces that make “good advice” feel abstract or insulting. When the margins are thin, advice can sound like moralizing from someone who isn’t living your constraints. Corroboration, by contrast, offers something warmer and more immediately usable: permission.
The quote also quietly indicts the advice-giver. If people want corroboration, the person dispensing “advice” may be chasing their own reward: the pleasure of being necessary, superior, sane. Steinbeck strips both sides down to motive, and in doing so, makes the line uncomfortably current: in an era of hot takes and “seeking feedback,” we often aren’t crowdsourcing insight so much as outsourcing absolution.
The craft is in the word “only.” Steinbeck isn’t claiming advice is useless; he’s saying our appetite for it is usually performative. We solicit guidance the way a lawyer asks questions on cross-examination: not to learn, but to build a case we’ve already decided. “Corroboration” is legal language, which sharpens the subtext. We aren’t searching for truth; we’re collecting testimony that supports the story we prefer about ourselves.
In Steinbeck’s world, that rings especially true. His fiction is crowded with people cornered by circumstance, pride, poverty, and social pressure - the kinds of forces that make “good advice” feel abstract or insulting. When the margins are thin, advice can sound like moralizing from someone who isn’t living your constraints. Corroboration, by contrast, offers something warmer and more immediately usable: permission.
The quote also quietly indicts the advice-giver. If people want corroboration, the person dispensing “advice” may be chasing their own reward: the pleasure of being necessary, superior, sane. Steinbeck strips both sides down to motive, and in doing so, makes the line uncomfortably current: in an era of hot takes and “seeking feedback,” we often aren’t crowdsourcing insight so much as outsourcing absolution.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
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