Daily Inspiration Quote by Saul Bellow

Advice, in Bellow's hands, becomes a confession: most of the time we already know what we want to do, and the real task is recruiting someone to bless it. The line works because it flips the innocent posture of seeking wisdom into something more strategic, even faintly corrupt. "Accomplice" is the tell. It drags the request for guidance out of the self-help aisle and into the back room, where motives are negotiated and responsibility is quietly laundered.

Bellow is writing in a postwar America saturated with expertise and anxious about choice: psychologists, columnists, professors, and friends as informal tribunals. In that world, asking for advice can look like humility, but it can function like outsourcing moral risk. If the decision turns out badly, the blame gets distributed; if it turns out well, the advisor becomes a witness for the defense. The subtext is less "people are dishonest" than "people are scared of owning their desires". We want permission, not instruction.

The wit is in its stingy accuracy. Bellow compresses an entire social ritual into a legal metaphor, and that metaphor exposes the power dynamics of conversation: the asker isn't merely vulnerable; they're lobbying. It also implicates the listener. Being asked for advice flatters the ego, and flattery makes compliant co-signers of us all. In a culture that prizes individual agency, Bellow spots the workaround: we keep the freedom, but we try to borrow the absolution.