Daily Inspiration Quote by Mike Judge

Mike Judge’s genius is that he can make a throwaway complaint sound like an anthropological finding. “They probably get their come-uppance about the same percentage that people in real life do” isn’t just cynicism; it’s a deadpan attack on the comforting fiction that the world is self-correcting. In sitcoms and cop shows, theft gets wrapped up neatly: villains are caught, order is restored, morality pays out. Judge shrugs at that narrative and replaces it with a grim actuarial table. Justice, he implies, isn’t a force. It’s a probability distribution, and the odds aren’t great.

The New York line does the heavier lifting. “Basically, stealing... might as well be legal” isn’t a policy claim so much as a satire of lived experience: if enforcement is inconsistent, if the burden of consequences falls randomly or not at all, legality becomes theater. Judge’s wording is key: “for all practical purposes” signals a practical citizen’s view of law, not a lawyer’s. Law is defined by outcomes, not statutes.

Subtextually, it’s also a jab at the way urban life trains people into low-grade resignation. You adapt, you stop expecting restitution, you internalize the idea that some losses are just the cost of being in the system. Judge isn’t romanticizing lawlessness; he’s mocking the gap between civic promise and civic performance, where “come-uppance” becomes another kind of fiction we tell ourselves to sleep at night.