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Art & Creativity Quote by Groucho Marx

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies"

About this Quote

Politics, in Groucho Marx's hands, isn't civic virtue; it's a full-time hustle with bad eyesight and worse incentives. The line works because it takes the dignified phrase "the art of" - usually reserved for diplomacy, leadership, or statecraft - and uses it as a straight man. What follows is a four-beat slapstick routine: look for trouble, find it everywhere, misread it, botch the fix. Each clause escalates the indictment, turning public service into a self-perpetuating machine that thrives on panic and incompetence.

The specific intent is comic demolition. Groucho isn't offering a policy critique so much as puncturing the performance of politics: the way officials scan the horizon for threats to justify relevance, budgets, and airtime. "Finding it everywhere" nails the paranoia economy - the constant reframing of ordinary complexity as existential crisis. The real sting is "diagnosing it incorrectly": not that problems aren't real, but that power often prefers a convenient story to an accurate one. Then comes the punchline with teeth: "applying the wrong remedies". It's not mere failure; it's iatrogenic harm, the cure that becomes the disease.

Context matters. Marx's career rose alongside mass media, economic upheaval, and war - eras when politics became spectacle, and spectacle became governance. As a comedian, he translates that anxiety into a cynical comfort: you're not crazy; the system really can be this backwards. The joke lands because it feels like reportage.

Quote Details

TopicWitty One-Liners
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Marx, Groucho. (2026, January 15). Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/politics-is-the-art-of-looking-for-trouble-34003/

Chicago Style
Marx, Groucho. "Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/politics-is-the-art-of-looking-for-trouble-34003/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/politics-is-the-art-of-looking-for-trouble-34003/. Accessed 13 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Groucho Add to List
Politics: Art of Finding Trouble and Wrong Remedies
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About the Author

Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx (October 2, 1890 - August 19, 1977) was a Comedian from USA.

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