Tracing Quotations
William A. Spooner? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: I love spoonerisms, humorous phrases in which the initial sounds or letters of words are swapped. According to a popular anecdote William A. Spooner who was the Warden of New College, Oxford was late to church services one day and found that a woman was sitting in …
Continue reading “Origin of Spoonerism: You Are Occupewing My Pie”
Ernest Rutherford? John Desmond Bernal? Richard Feynman? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Recently, while reading about the discovery of a new species of frog I marveled at the remarkable diversity of the biosphere. But, I was also reminded of the following humorous and barbed assertion: All science is either physics or stamp collecting. This statement …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: All Science Is Either Physics or Stamp Collecting”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky? Leo Tolstoy? Mary Morris? John Gardner? David Long? Ernest Hemingway? Deepak Chopra? Question for Quote Investigator: A provocative remark about stories has been attributed to Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, John Gardner, and others: There are only two plots in all of literature: 1) A person goes on a journey. 2) A stranger comes …
Billy Wilder? Ernst Lubitsch? Ted Elliott? Terry Rossio? Ray Bradbury? Vince Gilligan? Andrew Stanton? Question for Quote Investigator: On the commentary track of a video I once heard a screenwriter discuss the requirement to engage the audience’s cognitive powers while spinning a tale: Give the audience two plus two, and let them come up with …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Storytelling: Just Give Them Two and Two and Let Them Add It Up”
Who made the remark? Samuel Goldwyn? Yogi Berra? William Cuffe? George Arliss? Corey Ford? Gerald Ford? Who was turning? Richard Cobden? Aunt Harriet? Jules Verne? Franklin D. Roosevelt? George Washington? Abraham Lincoln? Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky? John Foster Dulles? Casey Stengel? Question for Quote Investigator: Samuel Goldwyn and Yogi Berra were both famous for constructing humorous …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: If George Washington Were Alive Today He’d Turn Over in His Grave”
Ayn Rand? Henry F. Cope? Josiah Stamp? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Here are two versions of an expression attributed to the influential and controversial novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand: A student would like to use Rand’s words as a quotation for the high school yearbook, but the editors have asked for a proper source. …
W. C. Fields? Great Lester? Fred Allen? Anonymous Vaudevillian? Question for Quote Investigator: I have been trying to trace the following gag: I’d rather have two girls at 21 each than one girl at 42. This line is usually attributed to the famous comedian W. C. Fields who played cantankerous and henpecked characters in movies. …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: I Would Rather Have Two Girls at 21 Each Than One At 42”
Lord Rochester? John Wilmot? James A. Magner? Mrs. John McLauchlan? Leonard Lyons? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: A very funny comment about child-rearing has implausibly been attributed to John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester: Before I got married I had six theories about bringing up children; now I have six children and no theories. Wilmot …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: I Had Six Theories About Bringing Up Children”
George Patton? T. W. H. Crosland? Edmund Kozalla? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: General George S. Patton made the most incisive remark about war that I have ever heard. He was rallying Allied troops who were attempting to defeat the Axis Powers during World War II. His assertion about the two-edged sword of patriotism was …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: No Bastard Ever Won a War by Dying for His Country”
Arnold Palmer? John Sutton? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The following statement about overcoming obstacles is attributed to the famous golfer Arnold Palmer: The most rewarding things you do in life are often the ones that look like they cannot be done. I am graduating soon and would like to use this as my yearbook …