Humor & Life Quote by W. C. Fields

A cheap, throwaway preference that lands like a scalpel: Philadelphia, of all places, becomes the consoling alternative. W. C. Fields builds the gag on strategic anti-romance. He doesn’t praise the city; he uses it as a benchmark of tolerable disappointment. The line works because it refuses the usual sentimental geography where someplace is always a paradise and another place is always a dump. Fields implies the opposite: reality is a series of mildly grim options, and the best you can do is choose the one with the least irritation.

The specific intent is misdirection. “On the whole” mimics the tone of a careful, reasonable adult weighing pros and cons, then swerves into a verdict so underwhelming it becomes funny. That faux-measured phrasing is the real punchline: it frames the speaker as someone who has seen enough of life to distrust grand enthusiasms. It’s a comedian’s version of world-weariness, delivered with the politeness of a travel review.

The subtext is Fields’s cultivated persona: suspicious of boosterism, allergic to cheer, and always quietly at war with the idea that anything is supposed to be “nice.” Philadelphia functions as a cultural shorthand - not glamorous, not mythic, sturdy enough to be the butt of the joke without collapsing into pure insult.

Context matters: Fields’s era loved civic pride and salesmanship, the American habit of claiming every place is the greatest place. His comedy punctures that balloon. The laugh comes from recognizing the performance of optimism, then enjoying the relief of someone finally refusing to perform it.