Three weeks ago, I invited readers to submit quotations for which they wanted me to try to trace the origins, using The Yale Book of Quotations and more recent research by me. Dozens responded via comments or e-mails. I am responding as best I can, a couple per week.
Mark C asks:
I’d love to see a definitive attribution to this old favorite, which I’ve seen attributed to Elvis Costello, Frank Zappa, and others:
Talking/writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
The earliest occurrence of this found by The Yale Book of Quotations was the following by Elvis Costello, quoted in Musician, October 1983:
Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
TRad writes:
“Any 20-year-old who isn’t a liberal doesn’t have a heart, and any 40-year-old who isn’t a conservative doesn’t have a brain.” I’ve seen it attributed to several persons, most often to Bismarck or Churchill.
I wrote about this in my column in the Yale Alumni Magazine:
One of the pleasures of compiling The Yale Book of Quotations was tracing and cross-referencing different versions and precursors of famous quotes. This one is usually credited to Georges Clemenceau, but W. Gurney Benham‘s Book of Quotations cites French premier and historian Francois Guizot (1787 to 1874), translating his statement as “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.” Benham asserts that “Clemenceau adopted this saying, substituting socialiste for republicain.”
But I was delighted to find that John Adams had expressed a similar idea well before Guizot entered adulthood. Thomas Jefferson preserved this quip, writing in a 1799 journal that Adams had said: “A boy of 15 who is not a democrat is good for nothing, and he is no better who is a democrat at 20.”
Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Quote origin suggestion. There statement that goes something like this and has been attributed to Brian Eno and Michael Stipe:
“Not many people listened to the Velvet Underground, but everyone who did formed a band.”
What about the “ancient Chinese curse” that says “May you live in interesting times.” I thought I’d read somewhere more recently that it is neither ancient nor Chinese.
The evolution of the socialist – conservative quote is worthy of notice as the gist is that mature people should think differently. For Jefferson young was 15 and mature 20. Churchill had those ages at 20 and 40. As we age, it is hard to consider someone 40 as already having matured.
“Rank isn’t merit. Age isn’t merit. Neither young nor old, high nor low, but only the action, honorable or not.”
I’d like to know where that quote comes from. I read it in a science fiction novel by Elizabeth Moon, set in the far future, and it was said to be a quote from Old Earth.
I Googled it, but didn’t find out who said it.
Thanks Fred!
I had always heard the Churchill quote in terms not of liberal/conservative (which are not exactly the same terms in Britain as they are in America), but in terms of being a socialist: “He who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart, and he who is still a socialist at age 40 has no brain.”
“Y’all reporters like my quotes, don’t you. Yeah, my quotes are Shaqalicious.”
“It’s Sinatra’s world. We just live in it.”