Daily Inspiration Quote by Danny DeVito

DeVito turns a grim truth about modern conflict into a pocket-sized joke about modern life: lawyers as deterrent, not remedy. The nuclear weapons analogy is doing heavy lifting. It’s absurd on its face, which is why it lands, but it also smuggles in a bleak premise: we live in systems where everyone feels compelled to arm up because everyone else has. The punchline isn’t that lawyers are evil; it’s that escalation is rational even when it’s poisonous.

The line also catches a very American paranoia about the legal system: litigation as a mutually assured destruction scenario. You don’t hire counsel because you’re eager to “go to war,” you hire them because you assume someone else already has, and being unarmed feels like volunteering to lose. That’s the cultural moment DeVito is needling: the way ordinary disputes (a contract, a divorce, a business disagreement) can instantly become procedural combat, with incentives that reward winning over repairing.

His phrasing is crucially casual - “I’ve got em” - as if this is just another household utility, a fire extinguisher you keep hoping to never touch. Then comes the cynical twist: the moment you deploy the tool designed to protect you, the situation gets worse. Subtext: the legal process can formalize resentment, harden positions, and convert messy human problems into zero-sum narratives. DeVito, a career specialist in lovable misanthropy, frames it as comedy, but the intent is diagnostic: our default safety mechanisms often function like threats, and the threat itself reshapes the room.