There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.

Benchley’s epigram satirizes a common habit of thought: reducing the complexity of human life to neat binaries (“two kinds of people”). By turning that impulse into the very subject of the joke, the line exposes how arbitrary and self-flattering such classifications can be—suggesting that the classifier often values the feeling of order more than accuracy. The punchline also creates a self-referential paradox: the speaker divides people into two classes in order to mock dividing people into two classes. The result is a compact critique of oversimplification, stereotyping, and the rhetorical convenience of false dichotomies.