Hillary Clinton? Eleanor Roosevelt? Rita Mae Brown? Phyllis Schlafly? Lowell Bruce Laingen? Armand J. Gariepy? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I read in the New York Times that one of the favorite adages of Hillary Clinton, former Senator and Secretary of State, is the following statement attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt: Women are like tea bags. …
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Quote Origin: Live Fast, Die Young, and Leave a Beautiful Corpse
James Dean? John Derek? Willard Motley? Irene L. Luce? J. M. O’Connor? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: James Dean was a charismatic young movie star and an icon of rebellion when he died in a car crash. I have always connected him to this motto: Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse. But …
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Quote Origin: Things Are More Like They Are Now Than They Have Ever Been
Dwight D. Eisenhower? Gerald Ford? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: President Dwight D. Eisenhower is commonly credited with making a comical statement that is almost a tautology. Here are a few different versions of his supposed remark: Things are more like they are right now than they ever have been.Things are more like they are …
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Quote Origin: For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn
Ernest Hemingway? William R. Kane? Roy K. Moulton? Avery Hopwood? Arthur C. Clarke? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Most people are familiar with short stories, but there is another class of works that might be called short-short stories. “Flash fiction” and “sudden fiction” are labels that are applied to this style of literature. One of …
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Quote Origin: The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese
Stephen Wright? Ernst Berg? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I am trying to discover where the following maxim comes from: The second mouse gets the cheese. Sometimes this phrase appears as part of a longer saying: The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. Your help would be greatly appreciated. …
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Quote Origin: We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children
Amish Saying? Ralph Waldo Emerson? Native American Proverb? Wendell Berry? Oscar Wilde? Chief Seattle? Moses Henry Cass? Dennis J. Hall? Helen Caldicott? Lester Brown? David R. Brower? Taghi Farvar? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: In my opinion the most thoughtful and poignant quotation about the environment is the following: We do not inherit the earth …
Quote Origin: News Is What Somebody Does Not Want You To Print. All the Rest Is Advertising
George Orwell? Alfred Harmsworth? William Randolph Hearst? L. E. Edwardson? Robert W. Sawyer? Mark Rhea Byers? Brian R. Roberts? Malcolm Muggeridge? Katharine Graham? Lord Rothermere? Lord Northcliffe? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I have been trying to trace a popular saying about journalism which can be expressed in several ways. Here are four examples to …
Quote Origin: Never Put Off Till Tomorrow What You Can Do The Day After Tomorrow Just As Well
Mark Twain? Oscar Wilde? Josh Billings? Spanish Proverb? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Everyone is guilty of some procrastination. Even the industrious humorist Mark Twain was credited with a quotation sympathetic to the indolent: Never put off till tomorrow, what you can do the day after tomorrow. Puzzlingly, this same quip has been ascribed to …
Quote Origin: I Hope He Will Bite My Other Generals and Make Them Mad, Too
King George II? Duke of Newcastle? Joe Miller? James Wolfe? Question for Quote Investigator: When George II of Great Britain was planning to send General James Wolfe on a military expedition to Canada his close advisor told him that Wolfe was a poor selection for such an important assignment because he was a madman. The …
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Quote Origin: The ‘t’ Is Silent, as in Harlow
Margot Asquith? Margot Grahame? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: According to a Hollywood legend there was a pointed verbal encounter between the movie siren Jean Harlow and the sharp-tongued English aristocrat Margot Asquith. When Harlow attended a party given by Asquith, the movie star presumptuously referred to the hostess by her first name, and she …
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