Quotes Uncovered
Here are more quote authors and origins Shapiro’s tracked down recently.
A while back, 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. Hundreds of people have responded via comments or e-mails. I am responding as best I can, a few per week.
Douglas Lax asked:
Who originally said “A government big enough to give you everything you want is strong enough to take everything you have” or “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have”? My search has attributed this quote to Thomas Jefferson, Barry Goldwater, and Gerald Ford. The truth?
This is usually attributed to Gerald Ford, but researcher Barry Popik has found it earlier, in Paul Harvey‘s 1952 book Remember These Things.
DanM asked:
I would say “That’s funny,” and my mother would respond “Funny ‘ha ha’ or funny peculiar?” I heard it once in the movie The Scarlet Pimpernel. (I think the movie was made in the 1930′s.) My mother never recalled where she heard it first, other than when she was a girl in Ireland (in the 1930′s).
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations and even the Oxford English Dictionary trace this only as far back as 1938. The Yale Book of Quotations, however, quotes Mariel Brady, Genevieve Gertrude (1928) for the “funny ha-ha”/ “funny peculiar” distinction.
GB asked:
“Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach.” This one is ancient and over-worn, but who said it first?
I wouldn’t call it ancient, but it has been around since 1903, when George Bernard Shaw wrote in Man and Superman: “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.”
Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?
Do any readers have any other quotations whose origins they would like me to attempt to trace?
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How about: “Lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute as as emergency on mine”?
I would appreciate some help with this one:
“You can’t have it all; where would you keep it?”
or perhaps:
“You can’t have everything; where would you keep it?”
My cursory searches have been inconclusive as to its origin. Thanks!
Interestingly I’ve only ever heard the funny quote in the order “Funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?” Is this a UK / USA difference?
And at university we had a variation on the last quote:
“He who can does; he who can’t, teaches. He who can’t teach lectures…”
“You can’t have everything; where would you keep it?”
I heard that on a Gallagher special years ago.
I’d love to know the origin of the vastly overused expression: “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
In Self-Reliance, Emerson writes something along the lines of “You don’t become the next Shakespeare by reading Shakespeare.”
Who actually said this first?
… and those who can’t teach, teach gym
Jeff –
Don’t know if he wrote t or not, but that sounds an awful lot like one of the late, great George Carlin’s lines. I’d also be curious to see who wrote it if he didn’t.