Quote Investigator® – Page 124

Quote Origin: When You Hear Hoofbeats Look for Horses Not Zebras

Hilton Read? Theodore E. Woodward? Ele and Walt Dulaney? Harley S. Smyth? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: In medicine the symptoms of a patient are often compatible with a variety of ailments. A skilled diagnostician will use probabilistic reasoning when deciding which ailment is the most likely. Bayesian inference first highlights common maladies instead of rare ones. Here are three versions of a germane saying:

When you hear hoofbeats look for horses not zebras.
If you hear hoof beats in the distance don’t expect a zebra.
When you hear hooves think of horses before zebras.

Admittedly, these adages work best outside of a zoo and on a non-African continent. Would you please examine the provenance of this saying?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest published evidence located by QI appeared in the “Arkansas Gazette” of Little Rock, Arkansas in October 1962. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

The father of a young man who was there reports that at the University of Arkansas School of Medicine this week a doctor surrounded himself with about a dozen students and sought to go to the heart of proper diagnostic procedure.

In the end he summed up good diagnosis this way: “When you hear hoofbeats in the night, look for horses — not zebras.”

The passage above occurred in a column called “Our Town” by Charles Allbright, but the participants were unidentified.

An earlier origin for the saying has been suggested. However, the claim is weakened by a multi-decade delay. For example, a variant statement has been ascribed to Dr. Theodore E. Woodward circa 1940s. Evidentiary support appeared in the 1980s. See the citations further below.

This article presents a snapshot of current knowledge, and future researchers may discover material that alters the ascription.

Here are additional selected citations.

Quote Origin: Read In Order To Live

Gustave Flaubert? Edward Bulwer-Lytton? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The prominent French literary figure Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary, placed great value on reading. The following statement is often attributed to him:

Read in order to live.

Would you please determine whether these words are apocryphal?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1867 Gustave Flaubert wrote a letter containing advice to Mademoiselle Leroyer de Chantepie. An English translation appeared in 1895. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

You ask me what books to read. Read Montaigne; read him slowly, steadily. He will calm you. And do not listen to people who talk of his egotism. You will like him, you will see. But do not read, as the children read, to amuse yourself, nor as ambitious people read, to get instruction. No! read to live!

Make an intellectual atmosphere for your soul, which shall be composed of the emanation of all the great minds. Study Shakespeare and Goethe thoroughly. Read translations of the Greek and Roman authors,—Homer, Petronius, Plautus, Apuleius, etc.

The phrasing above differs slightly from the version specified by the questioner; however, some other translations provide an exact match.

Below are additional selected citations.

Quote Origin: Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty

Anne Herbert? Chuck Wall? Ann Landers? George Carlin? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: Anyone listening to the news is confronted by disheartening phrases such as “random act of violence” and “ugly act of cruelty”. Yet, these phrases have been creatively reconstructed to produce uplifting suggestions. Here are three versions:

Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty.
Commit acts of random kindness and senseless beauty.
Today I will commit one random act of senseless kindness.

Would you please explore the history of these sayings?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest strong match known to QI appeared in the July 1985 issue of the influential countercultural journal “Whole Earth Review”. The California-based writer Anne Herbert penned an article titled “Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty”. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly. Don’t await a reason. It will make itself be more, senselessly.

Scrawl it on the wall: RANDOM KINDNESS AND SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY

I used to have fantasies of positive vandalism. Breaking into the school and painting a dirty room bright colors overnight. Fixing broken glass in people’s houses while they’re gone. Leaving full meals on tables in the struggling part of town.

QI believes that Anne Herbert deserves credit for this expression. The citation above is listed in the important references “The Quote Verifier” by Ralph Keyes² and “The Yale Book of Quotations” edited by Fred R. Shapiro.³

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Try Not To Become a Man of Success But Rather Try To Become a Man of Value

Albert Einstein? William Miller? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The blinkered pursuit of success can lead an individual to ignore other aspects of life such as adventure, humor, spirituality, exploration, altruism, and curiosity. Albert Einstein apparently offered pertinent advice. Here are four versions:

Try not to become a person of success but rather a person of value.
Do not try to become a person of success but try to become a person of value.
Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value.
Try to become not a man of success but try rather to become a man of value.

Would you please examine the provenance of this expression?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Some months before Albert Einstein’s death in April 1955 an editor of “LIFE” magazine named William Miller visited the famous scientist at his home in Princeton, New Jersey. The journalist was accompanied by his son Pat Miller and by Professor William Hermanns of San Jose State in California. Einstein responded to the son’s desire for guidance in life. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day.

Never lose a holy curiosity. Try not to become a man of success but rather try to become a man of value. He is considered successful in our day who gets more out of life than he puts in. But a man of value will give more than he receives.

The text above appeared in the May 2, 1955 issue of “LIFE”. The initial statement used the word “man” to designate an individual of unspecified sex instead of “person” which often occurs in modern instances. Also, over time variant phrases have proliferated based on compression and word re-ordering.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Plans Are Worthless, But Planning Is Everything

Dwight D. Eisenhower? Winston Churchill? Richard M. Nixon? Helmuth von Moltke? Mike Tyson? Anonymous

Question for Quote Investigator: The World War II leader and U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower apparently made a paradoxical statement about preparation. Here are two versions:

1) Plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
2) Plans are worthless, but planning is essential.

Would you please explore the origin of this saying?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1950 Dwight Eisenhower wrote a letter to a U.S. diplomat in which he ascribed a military-oriented version of the saying to an anonymous soldier. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

. . . I always remember the observation of a very successful soldier who said, “Peace-time plans are of no particular value, but peace-time planning is indispensable.”

During a speech in November 1957 Eisenhower employed the saying again. He told an anecdote about the maps used during U.S. military training. Maps of the Alsace-Lorraine area of Europe were used during instruction before World War I, but educational reformers decided that the location was not relevant to American forces. So the maps were switched to a new location within the U.S. for planning exercises. A few years later the military was deployed and fighting in the Alsace-Lorraine:²

I tell this story to illustrate the truth of the statement I heard long ago in the Army: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. There is a very great distinction because when you are planning for an emergency you must start with this one thing: the very definition of “emergency” is that it is unexpected, therefore it is not going to happen the way you are planning.

The details of a plan which was designed years in advance are often incorrect, but the planning process demands the thorough exploration of options and contingences. The knowledge gained during this probing is crucial to the selection of appropriate actions as future events unfold.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Procrastination Is the Assassin of Opportunity

Victor Kiam? Home Savings Bank? Painless Withers Dental Company? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: Each opportunity in life has an expiration date. One must act quickly. The successful entrepreneur and investor Victor Kiam apparently employed the following vivid metaphor:

Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin.

Would you please help find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Victor Kiam became famous when he starred in a series of memorable commercials for an electric razor by the Remington Company. He described his response after using the product:¹

I was delighted and impressed; so impressed I bought the company.

Kiam conducted the leveraged buyout in 1979, and he wrote a book about his experiences in life and business in 1986 titled “Going for It! How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur”. The Remington Company had lost millions of dollars during the 1970s, but Kiam was interested in purchasing the organization because he suspected that he could turn it around. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:²

In Chapter 1, I mentioned that an entrepreneur must be decisive and must also be prepared to grasp opportunity. Procrastination is opportunity’s natural assassin. I wasted no time in finding out the particulars of Remington’s situation.

Kiam was not the first to use this sharp figurative language. Many years earlier, in 1916 a newspaper in Durham, North Carolina printed an advertisement for Home Savings Bank encouraging readers to open an account:³

Procrastination is the assassin of opportunity and the destroyer of youthful ideals.

Don’t put it off—start that sayings account today. Add to it at regular intervals and you will soon be on the road to comfort and happiness.

QI believes that the expression was probably already in circulation in 1916. Yet, it was conceivable that the copywriter crafted the saying. The phrasing differed from the version Kiam later popularized.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: I Try To Leave Out the Parts that People Skip

Elmore Leonard? Marty Asher? Leonore Fleischer? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The funniest and most cogent writing advice I have ever heard was delivered by the best-selling author Elmore Leonard. According to folklore, an aspiring novelist implored Leonard to reveal the secret of his success, and he replied with something like this:

I leave out the parts that readers tend to skip.

Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence known to QI appeared in 1985 within the trade magazine “Publishers Weekly”. Columnist Leonore Fleischer relayed an anecdote from Marty Asher, editor-in-chief of the Quality Paperback Book Club. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

Marty said, “Do you want to hear the best quote about publishing that I’ve heard in 20 years?” We whipped out our Ticonderoga #2. “It was uttered by Elmore Leonard (author of Glitz) at the Book-of-the-Month Club luncheon. We were all raving to him about his books, how quickly they move and how good the dialogue is, and Leonard said quietly, out of the comer of his mouth, ‘Yeah, I try to leave out the parts that people skip.'” We’re gonna paste that on the wall over our Selectric.

Many years later in 2001 Leonard penned an essay of writing advice for “The New York Times”, and he included a similar remark. See the citation further below.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Never Doubt That a Small Group of Thoughtful, Committed Citizens Can Change the World; Indeed, It’s the Only Thing That Ever Has

Margaret Mead? Donald Keys? Norman Vincent Peale? Patrick E. Haggerty? R. H. Edwin Espy? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: A popular energizing statement about small groups changing the world is usually attributed to the influential cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead. Yet, I have been unable to find a solid citation. Would you please help?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Researchers have been unsuccessful in finding the quotation in Margaret Mead’s corpus. The earliest strong match known to QI appeared in the 1982 book “Earth at Omega: Passage to Planetization”. The epigraph of chapter 6 was the following. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
— Margaret Mead

The author, Donald Keys, did not provide any details about the source of the statement. Margaret Mead had died a few years earlier in 1978.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: If You Invent a Breakthrough in Artificial Intelligence So Machines Can Learn, That Is Worth 10 Microsofts

Bill Gates? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: I saw an advertisement on the “USA Today” website that claimed Bill Gates once spoke about a technology that was ripe for invention and would be worth 10 Microsofts. The ad did not identify the technology. Did Bill Gates really make a remark of this type?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In the early 2000s many companies with business models intertwined with the internet saw their stock prices collapse. Wary students observed this dot-com crash, and the number of computer science majors declined. In 2004 Bill Gates visited a series of universities to encourage students to pursue a career in computing which he believed still held marvelous opportunities. “The New York Times” reported a shrewd forward-looking comment made by Gates. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

Mr. Gates scoffed at the notion, advanced by some, that the computer industry was a mature business of waning opportunity. In one question-and-answer session, a student asked if there could ever be another technology company as successful as Microsoft.

“If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn,” Mr. Gates responded, “that is worth 10 Microsofts.”

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: It Is Not Real Work Unless You Would Rather Be Doing Something Else

James Matthew Barrie? Chub De Wolfe? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: When I am absorbed in performing a difficult and fascinating task I do not feel like I am working. James Matthew Barrie, the well-known creator of “Peter Pan”, addressed this phenomenon:

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.

I have been unable to find a solid citation. Would you please help?

Reply from Quote Investigator: This saying is difficult to trace because the original phrasing employed by J. M. Barrie was different. On May 3, 1922 Barrie delivered the Rectorial Address at St. Andrews University. He spoke about his time as a freelance journalist, and noted that his excitement and motivation were large enough that the experience did not seem like work. In the following passage he also referred to Robert Louis Stevenson’s success as a writer. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:¹

But now, on reflection, a dreadful sinking assails me, that this was not really work. The artistic callings—you remember how Stevenson thumped them—are merely doing what you are clamorous to be at; it is not real work unless you would rather be doing something else.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.