Daily Inspiration Quote by Mike Peters

Libertarian rhetoric with a human face: Peters frames “personal choice” as common sense, then quietly slips in a villain - “society” - as if it’s a single scolding adult standing over your shoulder. That move is doing most of the work. “We believe” signals a camp, a tribe, an identity you can join without paperwork. It’s less a philosophical proof than a rallying cry, designed to feel spacious and morally clean.

Coming from a cartoonist, the line reads like a caption to a panel where bureaucracy has literal tentacles. Editorial cartooning thrives on personifying abstraction, and “society dictating” is built for that medium: it invites an image of faceless committees, wagging fingers, maybe a clipboard labeled “rules.” The subtext is that collective norms are inherently coercive, while individual preference is inherently virtuous. That’s a persuasive simplification, because it turns complicated tradeoffs (public health, civil rights, schooling, zoning, speech norms) into a drama of freedom versus meddling.

The phrase “how we must live our lives” is also a strategic overreach: it implies total domination, not minor regulation. No one is arguing for dictating your whole life, but the exaggeration makes any limit sound existential. The intent isn’t to win a policy argument; it’s to pre-load your emotional response so that “society” feels like oppression, and “choice” feels like dignity - even when choices collide.