I find that ducks' opinion of me is greatly influenced by whether or not I have bread.

This line is a characteristic Mitch Hedberg one-liner from his stand-up era in the late 1990s–early 2000s, when he was known for surreal, observational jokes delivered in a deadpan, minimalist style. Hedberg often built humor from everyday encounters (animals, food, public spaces) and then pivoted to an unexpected logical conclusion. The “ducks and bread” premise draws on a familiar scene—people feeding ducks in parks—reframed as a commentary on how quickly “approval” can be bought with a simple reward. While widely circulated in quote collections and fan transcriptions, the precise performance date and venue are not reliably fixed from memory alone.

Hedberg treats social approval as transactional: the ducks’ “opinion” is not based on character, but on immediate benefit. The joke works by anthropomorphizing ducks—granting them evaluative judgment—then undercutting that seriousness with the banal currency of bread. It satirizes a broader human truth: admiration and friendliness often correlate with what someone can get from you, not who you are. The line also plays with perspective and status; the speaker imagines being judged by ducks, a comically low-stakes audience, which makes the observation feel both absurd and oddly insightful.