Happiness Quote by Loretta Swit

Swit’s line lands with the plainspoken confidence of someone who’s spent a career watching institutions up close - not from the Oval Office, but from the soundstage, where power is performed, negotiated, and often undercut with a joke. By invoking the Constitution, she borrows the gravitas of civic scripture, but she uses it less as legal citation than as cultural permission slip: wanting more isn’t selfish, it’s American.

The sly move is how she slides from “pursuit of happiness” (a famously elastic ideal) to “the best we can” (a consumer-friendly upgrade). That pivot reflects the way U.S. civic language gets routinely repackaged into personal aspiration. The founding promise was about freedom from tyranny and the right to seek a fulfilling life; the modern ear hears it as a guarantee of maximum options - better work, better health, better love, better stuff. Swit’s phrasing catches that drift without sounding cynical. It’s not an argument; it’s reassurance.

Context matters: Swit is best known for M*A*S*H, a show that turned a war setting into a weekly critique of bureaucracy, masculinity, and the moral exhaustion of “just doing your job.” Coming from that legacy, “entitled” reads as both earnest and slightly provocative. She’s asserting dignity in an era when entitlement is often wielded as an insult, especially toward women asking for more space, more pay, more respect. The quote works because it frames desire as citizenship - not indulgence - and dares you to disagree without sounding un-American.