Daily Inspiration Quote by Doug Larson

Larson’s line is a cartoonist’s kind of wisdom: a gag with teeth, built on the sly reversal that makes you laugh and then check your calendar for that meeting you shouldn’t have scheduled. The joke is structural. We usually treat wisdom as an emergency service - something noble that shows up in crisis to dispense calm, measured choices. Larson flips it into preventive care. If you’re truly wise, the dramatic moment that would showcase your wisdom never arrives, because you quietly sidestepped it three decisions ago.

The intent is gently corrosive. It punctures the self-flattering fantasy that being wise means handling chaos with grace, when most “mature” people are just veterans of avoidable disasters. The subtext: a lot of what we call wisdom is actually hindsight in a nicer outfit. It also needles a culture that loves redemption arcs and heroic recoveries; Larson suggests the real flex is boring competence, the kind that makes for bad stories and good lives.

As a cartoonist, Larson writes in the language of the single-panel: compressed, quotable, and slightly cynical about human behavior. The humor isn’t nihilism; it’s pragmatic skepticism. Wisdom isn’t a halo, it’s a habit of risk management: recognizing the trap, the ego-bait, the sunk-cost spiral, and taking the unglamorous exit before you can turn your mistake into a personality.