A Prophetic Commentary On The Times We Live In

Seinfeld’s season 6 episode “The Beard” might not have aged too well in certain respects, but its best line of dialogue holds up better than ever. The quote that may well define George Costanza’s character more than any other features prominently in the episode’s Jerry-centric subplot.

For many fans of the show, this line is the best George quote in any Seinfeld episode, getting to the core of the profound contradictions within this inimitably brilliant comedy character. Perhaps even more significantly, it’s become a strangely prescient commentary on the world we live in today.

George utters the line as his final word of advice to Jerry before he goes to take a polygraph test. Jerry hopes he can gain valuable insights from his friend about how to pass the test, since George is notoriously Seinfeld’s biggest liar. But George claims he has nothing to offer him, until Jerry gets up to leave.

In the nick of time, George offers precisely the words of wisdom Jerry needs. “Jerry, just remember,” he tells him, “it’s not a lie if you believe it.” This eight-word pronouncement neatly sums up the entire post-truth era we’re apparently living through, in which almost anything passes for information online, as long as it’s believed by somebody.

George’s Best Seinfeld Line Has Aged Surprisingly Well

Although it’s these kinds of scenes in Seinfeld that make us glad we’re not friends with George, he ironically captured the zeitgeist of a future generation with his most famous line. The world of online content supposedly gives us access to any news or information we need at the click of a button.

But this new reality has also lowered the bar for what counts as the truth, and given liars far more scope to cause untold damage across society. Whereas in George Costanza’s day, his lies were largely confined to the people he met in person, today anyone with a social media account can potentially lie to millions of people at once.

While “The Beard” primarily tells an outdated story about Elaine Benes trying to “convert” a homosexual man straight, the episode’s most celebrated line has proven to be remarkably prophetic. The internet, in particular, is now full of people who think just like George Costanza. By believing their own lies, they manage to convince us that they’re true.

Given this state of affairs, which has somehow extended to the field of global geopolitics, it’s difficult to know what to believe. Seinfeld now belongs to a simpler, bygone era, when someone as mendacious as George was a social extreme worthy of ridicule.

George’s Best Line Shows Why He’s So Hard To Like When Rewatching Seinfeld Today

George Costanza undoubtedly deserves his place among the greatest comedy characters ever created for the small screen. Nevertheless, as much as he’s a source of seemingly endless entertainment as the butt of countless classic Seinfeld jokes, he’s also very difficult to like.

Throughout the show, he commits various moral transgressions born out of extraordinary selfishness, including making up a fraudulent charity, barging children and an old person out of the way to flee from a fire, and having his girlfriend locked in jail to avoid being in a relationship. Worst of all, though, is what he does to his fiancée, Susan.

After he inadvertently poisons her by insisting on buying cheap, illegal envelopes for the invitations to their wedding, George’s relieved reaction to Susan’s death in the Seinfeld season 7 finale is outright reprehensible. Yet, his most consistent negative characteristic during the course of the series is his prodigious talent for lying.

From his claim that he’s a marine biologist in season 5 to his fake disability in season 9, there are no limits to George’s duplicity. In today’s social climate, this characteristic makes it even harder to like him when we rewatch Seinfeld.