Daily Inspiration Quote by Mae West

Mae West turns moral panic into a punchline, and the trick is that she never argues with virtue on its own turf. "Two evils" nods to the old proverb about choosing the lesser sin, a phrase soaked in guilt and public respectability. West flips it: if society is going to label your desires "evil" anyway, you might as well treat the menu like an adventure list. The laugh lands because the sentence is structured like a responsible adult weighing options, then swerves into mischievous hedonism with "the one I've never tried."

The intent is less about endorsing wrongdoing than exposing how elastic "evil" can be when it's really shorthand for female autonomy. In West's era, a woman openly telegraphing curiosity - sexual, social, experiential - was itself framed as transgression. Her persona thrives on that double standard: men get "experience", women get "reputation". By choosing novelty over safety, she makes the audience complicit. You laugh, and in laughing you admit the moral categories were always a little theatrical.

Context matters: West built a career skirting censorship, weaponizing innuendo precisely because the culture insisted on pretending it couldn't hear it. The line works as a self-contained act of defiance. It mocks the false choice society offers women - be good or be ruined - and replaces it with a third option: be amused, be curious, take control of the narrative. West doesn't ask permission to be appetitive; she makes appetite sound like common sense.