We stand today at a crossroads: One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other leads to total extinction. Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice.

The line is a compact example of Woody Allen’s characteristic dark, self-undercutting humor: it mimics the solemn rhetoric of political or moral exhortation (“we stand today at a crossroads”) only to reveal that both options are catastrophic. By presenting “despair” as the comparatively better alternative to “total extinction,” the quote satirizes grand public language, fatalism, and the tendency to frame complex problems as binary choices. The final sentence—“Let us hope we have the wisdom to make the right choice”—adds a further twist, implying that even when outcomes are dire, people still cling to the comforting illusion of rational control and “wise” decision-making.