Douglas Adams? Spike Milligan? Terry Pratchett? Charlie Bates? Harry Harrison? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: Prominent humorists have been credited with statements from the following family of jokes about collisions. Here are three examples:
(1) Falling doesn’t hurt you; it’s the sudden stop at the end.
(2) It isn’t the speed that kills people; it’s the sudden stop.
(3) Flying isn’t dangerous. Crashing is dangerous.
English author Douglas Adams, Irish comedian Spike Milligan, and English author Terry Pratchett have each received credit for telling jokes in this family. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: This joke is difficult to trace because it can be phrased in many ways. The earliest match located by QI appeared in 1853 within an anecdote published in “The Ladies’ Repository” magazine of New York. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
After a late supper, and two or three extra glasses, Charlie Bates is apt to be somnambulistic. Night before last, being an occasion of this kind, he backed himself out of his chamber window and fell to the pavement, a distance of ten or twelve feet. A passer-by came up to condole with him, remarking, “You seem to have had a bad fall.” “My dear sir,” answered Charlie, “the fall was a trifle not worth mentioning; but the sudden stop was decidedly unpleasant.”
Thus, this family of jokes began many years before Douglas Adams, Spike Milligan, and Terry Pratchett were born.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1883 an instance appeared in the picture book “The Fool’s Paradise with the Many Wonderful Adventures”. Two illustrations from this book are shown at the top of this article:2
The Bear has him by the coat tail! Ha! It’s all over with him! No! he’s all over it! He has taken the horrid plunge!
Oh, woe! that’s the quickest way to reach the bottom! But it’s the sudden stop that he does not like!
A separate QI article examines the following thematically related joke with citations beginning in 1887: The optimist who fell from a tall building said while passing each story “All’s well so far”. Here is a link.
In 1893 “Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine” of Terre Haute, Indiana printed the following with an anonymous attribution:3
The majority of trained travelers and railroad men would prefer a much slower stop, as they are in full sympathy with the man who declared it was not the height of the fall that hurt him, but the sudden stop at the end of it.
In 1903 “The Photo-American” printed an article by Francois Voitier which included the following:4
Don’t quite see the wisdom of jumping over a precipice to see whether it hurts when one knows that others have experimented thusly at the cost of their lives. You’ll surely land feet up! It’s the sudden stop that hurts—not the fall.
In 1911 an article about flying machines in “The World To-Day” of New York contained the following:5
The tug of gravitation on a flying machine seems a bit too big to overcome. It isn’t the drop that hurts—it’s the sudden stop, and we fear it.
In 1922 “Sunset: The Pacific Monthly” of San Francisco, California printed an instance:6
There you have it, scientifically expressed: it isn’t the fall that hurts, it’s the sudden stop, and the suddener the stop, the greater the damage. Hence the pneumatic tire and the boxing glove as against steel rims and brass knuckles.
In 1945 Popular Science printed a version with the word “speed”:7
He adds wryly, “Keep in mind that moth-eaten statement that it isn’t the speed that kills people; it’s the sudden stop.”
In 1960 “Analog Science Fact & Fiction” published a story by Harry Harrison which began with the following:8
Speed never hurt anybody—it’s the sudden stop at the end.
QI has not found any solid matches for this quip in the writings of Douglas Adams. The 1982 book by Adams titled “Life, the Universe and Everything” contained a thematically related joke about learning to fly:9
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say on the subject of flying.
There is an art, it says, or rather, a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
The book mentioned that the learning process could be painful:
All it requires is simply the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight, and the willingness not to mind that it’s going to hurt.
That is, it’s going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground.
In 1988 Terry Pratchett published “Sourcery” which was the fifth book in the popular Discworld fantasy series. The character Rincewind expressed fear of riding on a magic carpet:10
“I’m not going to ride on a magic carpet!” he hissed. “I’m afraid of grounds!”
“You mean heights,” said Conina. “And stop being silly.”
“I know what I mean! It’s the grounds that kill you!”
In 1998 the book “Echo of an Angry God” by Beverley Harper credited Spike Milligan with a pertinent joke:11
She remembered watching Spike Milligan on television once saying that people who were scared of flying had got it wrong. Flying wasn’t dangerous. It was crashing that was dangerous.
In 1999 a variant joke appeared as a filler item in a Rock Island, Illinois newspaper:12
Chuckle
It’s not the pace of life that concerns me, it’s the sudden stop at the end.
In 2010 Guerrilla Project Management by Kenneth T. Hanley included this as a chapter epigraph:13
It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.
—Douglas Adams
In conclusion, QI tentatively credits Charlie Bates with originating this family of quips based on the humorous anecdote printed in 1853. The phrasing of the joke evolved over time. The version mentioning “speed” was circulating by 1945.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Toby Nangle and Moonlight Hanger whose inquiries led QI to formulate this question and perform this exploration. Also, thanks to discussants Adam, Nick Pelling, and Derek Robinson. In addition, thanks to @RobM0RM0NT who told QI about the Terry Pratchett citation.
Image Notes: Illustrations from the 1883 book “The Fool’s Paradise”.
- 1853 October, The Ladies’ Repository, Editor’s Repository, What Makes a Fall Unpleasant, Quote Page 471 and 472, T. Carlton and Z. Phillips, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1883, The Fool’s Paradise, with the Many Wonderful Adventures There As Seen in the Strange Surpassing Peep Show of Professor Wolley Cobble by Wilhelm Busch, (Date specified in preface: May 1883), Chapter: The Giant Bear Hunter and the Bruin Who Nearly Caught Him, Star Page 33, Quote Page 34, E. P. Dutton and Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1893 November, Locomotive Firemen’s Magazine, The Problem of the Future by William Weiler, Start Page 947, Quote Page 948, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Terre Haute, Indiana. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1903 June, The Photo-American, Volume 14, Number 6, Hot Coals by Francois Voitier, Start Page 181, Quote Page 185, The Photo-American Publishing Company, Stamford, Connecticut. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1911 October, The World To-Day, Volume 21, Number 4, Man as a Land Animal, Quote Page 1155, Column 2, World Review Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1922 June, Sunset: The Pacific Monthly, Volume 48, Number 6, What Destroys the Highways? by Victor Willard, Start Page 9, Quote Page 10, Column 2 and 3, Sunset Magazine Inc., San Francisco, California. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1945 November, Popular Science, Putting Plane’s Fuselage To Work by Devon Francis, Start Page 65, Quote Page 69, Column 2, Popular Science Publishing Company, New York. (Google Books Full View) link ↩︎
- 1960 December, Analog Science Fact & Fiction, Volume 66, Number 4, The K-Factor by Harry Harrison, Start Page 37, Quote Page 37, Street and Smith Publications, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1982, Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams, Chapter 11, Quote Page 57 and 58, Pan Books, London, England. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1988 (1989 Reprint), Sourcery by Terry Pratchett, Series: Discworld, Quote Page 168, A Signet Book: New American Library: Penguin Books, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1998 Copyright (2007 Reprint), Echo of an Angry God by Beverley Harper, Quote Page 146, Pan Macmillan Australia, Sydney, Australia. (Google Books Preview) ↩︎
- 1999 September 7, The Rock Island Argus, Chuckle, Quote Page 1, Column 1, Rock Island, Illinois. (Newspapers_com) ↩︎
- 2010, Guerrilla Project Management by Kenneth T. Hanley (M. Eng.), Chapter 6: Always Starting With the End in Mind, Unnumbered page, Management Concepts, Vienna, Virginia. (Google Books Preview) ↩︎