Georg Christoph Lichtenberg? Stendhal? Marie-Henri Beyle? W. H. Auden? Bayard Taylor?
Depiction of Equus Scotti and other prehistoric animals
Question for Quote Investigator: A German humorist who lived in the 18th century thought the Dutch language sounded ridiculous as indicated by the following quip:
A donkey appears to me like a horse translated into Dutch.
Would you please help me to find the name of the humorist together with a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: German physicist and satirist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg died in 1799. His writings were collected and published shortly after his death. The second volume in 1801 contained the following saying in German. One possible translation into English has been included below. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Der Esel kommt mir vor wie ein Pferd ins Holländische übersetzt. The donkey seems to me like a horse translated into Dutch.
The quip was circulating in English by 1879 when it appeared in the book “Studies in German Literature” by Bayard Taylor:2
I think even our extravagant American idea of humor will appreciate his remark that “a donkey is simply a horse translated into Dutch;” . . .
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Illustration of a couple about to kiss from Unsplash
Question for Quote Investigator: A kiss has been described as a “wordless articulation of desires whose object lies in the future.” Would you please help me to determine who made this statement?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1986 U.S. essayist and “Time” magazine journalist Lance Morrow published a piece about kissing which included the following passage. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Kissing is a promise that reserves the right of refusal. A kiss is mute and highly articulate. It involves a brief fusion of two heads, the head being the residence of mind and soul. The mouth is simultaneously the front office of language and of hunger.
The kiss is a wordless articulation of desires whose object lies in the future, and somewhat to the south.
What made the screen kiss stimulating in the old days was that the consummation was left to occur in the viewer’s imagination.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Walt Disney? Carolyn Kay Shafer? Douglas Adams? John Lloyd? Adam Breede? Ralph Spence? Anonymous?
Picture of a boardroom from Unsplash
Question for Quote Investigator: I first encountered the following quip many years ago. Here are two versions:
(1) You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps. (2) You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it does help.
Would you please explore the origin of this humorous remark?
Reply from Quote Investigator: This joke has been employed by famous individuals. For example, in 1933 the entertainment entrepreneur Walt Disney received credit for the jest from his secretary:1
“We have a staff of exceptionally young people. Good fellowship predominates, but we all work hard.
“Mr. Disney is never too busy to be genuinely interested in each individual. He often says jokingly: ‘You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!’”
This remark fits the following template: “You don’t have to be crazy to X, but it helps” A family of expressions of this type is sometimes called a snowclone. Here is an overview with dates which depicts the evolution of the joke:
1920 Jun: A man don’t have to be crazy to believe in Free Trade, but it helps. (Anonymous)
1921 Jul: A man don’t have to be crazy to play golf, but it helps a great deal. (Attributed to unnamed business man in St. Paul, Nebraska)
1925 Nov: You don’t have to be crazy to dance the Charleston, but it helps. (Attributed to Ralph Spence)
1925 Jun: You don’t have to be crazy to play this on a saxophone, but it helps a lot. (Crossword clue in “Judge” magazine)
1926 Aug: One doesn’t have to be crazy to pick an all-star team but it helps. (Columnist Percy the Pest)
1930 Dec: “Do you have to be crazy to write poetry?” “No, but it helps” (Anonymous)
1932 Jul: Mr. Allison also admits that one doesn’t have to be crazy to write columns, but that it helps. (Attributed to Albert Allison)
1933 Nov: You don’t have to be crazy to work here, but it helps! (Attributed to Walt Disney)
1934 Sep: You don’t have to be a nut to go hunting and fishing, but it helps. (Columnist Hank in Springfield, Illinois newspaper)
1941 Feb: It is not necessary to go crazy over the work, but it helps. (Engineering student at University of Michigan)
1948 Mar: You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it does help. (Anonymous sign)
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
G. K. Chesterton? Malcolm Muggeridge? Émile Cammaerts? Umberto Eco? Apocryphal?
Illustration of meditation from geralt at Pixabay
Question for Quote Investigator: An individual who becomes skeptical about traditional belief systems does not automatically embrace careful thought and rationality. Instead, the individual may embrace more eccentric belief systems and superstitions. Consider the following related remark:
When people cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything.
This statement has been attributed to the prominent English writer and philosopher Gilbert K. Chesterton. However, I am uncertain because I have not found a solid citation. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Researchers have been unable to find this saying in the writings or speeches of G. K. Chesterton who died in 1936.
The earliest known linkage to the famous writer appeared in the 1937 biography “The Laughing Prophet: The Seven Virtues and G. K. Chesterton” by Émile Cammaerts. The biography discussed a story titled “The Oracle of the Dog” featuring Chesterton’s amateur detective character Father Brown during which the sleuth asserted that some modern thinkers had replaced their rationalism and skepticism with superstition. Cammaerts summarized the viewpoint as follows. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything …
Cammaerts was not quoting Chesterton; instead he was concisely representing a stance he ascribed to Chesterton and his character Father Brown.
In 1953 English journalist Malcolm Muggeridge attributed the full saying under examination to Chesterton:2
G. K. Chesterton once remarked that, contrary to the popular supposition, when men cease to believe in God they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything.
Muggeridge helped popularize the attribution to Chesterton by presenting it repeatedly, e.g., in 1953, 1955, 1963, and 1966. The credibility of this linkage was weak because the phrasing of the attributed statement varied.
Below is an overview showing excerpts and dates. The overview begins with thematically related statements from other thinkers and continues with remarks from Chesterton that were pertinent to this topic. The overview ends with versions of the saying that have been attributed to Chesterton after his death.
1844: When people cease to believe in God, they believe in ghosts. (Attributed to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)
1867: When men cease to believe in God, they begin again to believe in ghosts, i. e. in shams. (George M. Grant)
1870: “When men cease to believe in GOD, they believe in ghosts.” Destroy the venerable edifice of belief in the sober and severely moral and orderly GOD of the Bible, and amidst the ruins will spring up superstitions, extravagant and obscene … (J. Rice Byrne)
1908: The man who cannot believe his senses, and the man who cannot believe anything else, are both insane. (G. K. Chesterton)
1914: There may have been a time when people found it easy to believe anything. But we are finding it vastly easier to disbelieve anything. Both processes save the human mind from the disgusting duty of distinguishing between one thing and another. (G. K. Chesterton)
1923: It’s the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense, and can’t see things as they are. A dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery and a pig is a mascot and a beetle is a scarab, calling up all the menagerie of polytheism from Egypt and old India. (Spoken by Father Brown in G. K. Chesterton’s short story “The Oracle of the Dog”)
1924: You all swore you were hard-shelled materialists; and as a matter of fact you were all balanced on the very edge of belief—of belief in almost anything. There are thousands balanced on it to-day; but it’s a sharp, uncomfortable edge to sit on. You won’t rest till you believe something. (Spoken by Father Brown in G. K. Chesterton’s short story “The Miracle Of Moon Crescent”)
1928: Men have always one of two things—either a complete and conscious philosophy or the unconscious acceptance of the broken bits of some incomplete and shattered and often discredited philosophy. (G. K. Chesterton)
1937: The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything. (Émile Cammaerts’s depiction of G. K. Chesterton’s viewpoint)
1953: When men cease to believe in God they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything. (Malcolm Muggeridge’s depiction of G. K. Chesterton’s viewpoint)
1955: When people cease to believe in God, they do not then believe in nothing, but in anything. (Malcolm Muggeridge’s depiction of G. K. Chesterton’s viewpoint)
1963: When people cease to believe in a deity they do not then believe in nothing, but — what is much more calamitous — in anything. (Malcolm Muggeridge’s depiction of G. K. Chesterton’s viewpoint)
1989: When men stop believing in God, it isn’t that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything. (Umberto Eco’s depiction of G. K. Chesterton’s viewpoint)
Here are details for selected citations in chronological order.
Albert Einstein? Henry Miller? Gerald W. Marshall? Bill Glass? Epcot Slogan? Apocryphal?
Collection of colored pencils from Leohoho at Unsplash
Question for Quote Investigator: A dynamic imagination is vital because it helps us to envision future possibilities. This notion has been expressed as follows:
Imagination is everything. It is the preview of coming attractions.
This statement has been attributed to the famous physicist Albert Einstein, but I am decidedly skeptical because I have never seen a proper citation. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Albert Einstein wrote or spoke this statement. It is not listed in the comprehensive reference “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press.1
Einstein died in 1955. The earliest close matches known to QI appeared in two books in 1981. The self-help book “Reaching Your Possibilities Through Commitment” by Gerald W. Marshall contained the following:2
It has often been said that we are only one generation from heathenism. Perhaps we are only one generation from the Dark Ages as well if we don’t have big ideas. We need vivid imagination to create new ideas for success. Albert Einstein once said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of coming attractions.”
Also, in 1981 Bill Glass published the motivational book “Expect To Win” which printed a slightly longer version of the saying using the word “life’s”:3
Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” And this works both positively and negatively.
Both 1981 books credited Einstein, and QI hypothesizes an earlier instance exists, but there is no compelling reason to believe that Albert Einstein used the expression.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Question for Quote Investigator: Historically, the censorship impulse has been enormously powerful and nearly universal. Interestingly, the nature of the repressed material has been highly variable. It has included sexual, ideological, religious, cultural, and military topics.
The opposition to censorship has also been forcefully expressed. Apparently, a U.S. President once said:
Don’t join the book burners … Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book.
Do you know who said this? Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower delivered the commencement address at Dartmouth Collegein New Hampshire on June 14th, 1953. A transcript appeared in “The New York Times” the following day. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you are going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship.
How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is? What it teaches—why does it have such an appeal for men? Why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It’s almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Question for Quote Investigator: It is tempting to view the world through the prism of an all-encompassing sociocultural stance, e.g., Marxism, Freudianism, or existentialism. However, this distorted vision reduces one’s life to a didactic parable. Here is a humorous remark about this obsessive reductionism:
Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.
This statement has been attributed to the prominent German-American philosopher Herbert Marcuse, but I have been unable to find a citation. Would you please help me?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1978 Herbert Marcuse was interviewed by U.K. philosopher and broadcaster Bryan Magee for the BBC. A transcript appeared in the BBC magazine “The Listener” of London. Magee asked Marcuse about Marx’s conception of the alienation of labor. Marcuse replied that it was a complicated subject. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
According to Marx, alienation was a socio-economic concept, and it meant (this is a very brutal abbreviation) that, under capitalism, men and women could not, in their work, fulfil their own individual humane faculties and needs, that this was due to the capitalist mode of production itself , and could only be remedied by radically changing this mode of production.
Marcuse commented on the misuse of the term alienation:
Today, the concept of alienation has been expanded and extended to such an extent that this original content is almost entirely lost—an extension all too easy, which I consider not only premature, but also wrong. For example, not every kind of trouble or problem someone has with his girlfriend or boyfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production.
“The Listener” magazine repeated and highlighted this statement in a simplified pull quote:2
‘Not every problem someone has with his girlfriend is necessarily due to the capitalist mode of production’
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Chris Rock? Michael Cavna? Garry Trudeau? David Frost? Aaron McGruder? Anonymous?
Picture of stickers stating “I Voted” from Unsplash
Question for Quote Investigator: Satire can puncture pomposity and direct laughter at the powerful. The results of U.S. presidential elections have been swayed by satire. The 1960 contest between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon was close. The barbs directed at Nixon were effective in delaying his ascension to the White House by eight years. One astute commentator said:
Kennedy didn’t beat Nixon. Satire beat Nixon.
The above remark has been attributed to comedian Chris Rock. Would you please help me to find a citation?
Reply from Quote Investigator: In 2008 journalist Michael Cavna published “Comedians Of Clout” in the “Washington Post”. Cavna gathered and presented comments about satire from contemporary comedians including Chris Rock:1
. . . he acknowledges the potential power of electoral satire. The comic, speaking by phone, says he grew up hearing the lesson that back in 1960, “Kennedy didn’t beat Nixon. Satire beat Nixon.”
Thus, Chris Rock helped to popularize this expression, but he disclaimed credit. The originator remains unknown.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Mark Twain? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.? Alexandre Dumas fils? Lady Mary Wortley Montagu? Ellen Osborn? Manley H. Pike? Ben Johnson? Benjamin Disraeli? Alexander Chase? Roger O’Mara? Anonymous?
One illuminated lightbulb from Pixabay
Question for Quote Investigator: Making sweeping statements about the universe is difficult to resist, but exceptions seem to be unavoidable. The following comically paradoxical statement is popular. Here are two versions:
(1) All generalizations are false, including this one. (2) No generalization is wholly true—not even this one.
This notion has been attributed to many people including U.S. humorist Mark Twain, U.S. jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., and French playwright Alexandre Dumas fils. The situation is confusing. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: This thought has been expressed in many ways. The identity of the creator remains uncertain. A precursor was penned in 1710 by English aristocrat Lady Mary Wortley Montagu who achieved fame via her eloquent letters. Below is an overview sampling with attributions and dates:
1710: General notions are generally wrong. (Lady Mary Wortley Montagu)
1882 Jul: All generalizations are false, including this one. (Attributed to a “witty Frenchman”)
1886: All generalizations are dangerous, even this one. (Attributed to Alexandre Dumas fils)
1892 Dec: No concise, unqualified assertion is ever entirely true—not even this one. (Manley H. Pike)
1894: No generalization is quite true; not even this one! (French adage)
1895 Aug: No generalization is absolutely correct—not even this one. (French adage)
1896 Jun: No generalization is accurate—not even this one. (Ellen Osborn)
1897 Jun: No generalization is quite true, not even this one. (Attributed to a “famous Frenchman”)
1903 May: No generalization is wholly true, not even this one. (Anonymous)
1911 Jul: No generalization is wholly true—not even this one. (Private detective Roger O’Mara)
1917 Feb: No generalization is ever completely true, not even this one. (Attributed to a Frenchman by Henry Cabot Lodge)
1926: Toutes les généralisations sont fausses, y compris celle que je viens de faire. Translation: All generalizations are wrong, including the one I just made. (Anonymous)
1930: No generalization is wholly true—not even this one. (Attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. by Owen Wister)
1943: All generalizations are dangerous, even this one. (Attributed to Alexandre Dumas fils)
1973 Jan: All generalizations are false including this one. (Attributed to Mark Twain)
1979 Mar: All generalizations are false, including this one. (Attributed to Ben Johnson)
1981: All generalizations are false, including this one. (Attributed to Benjamin Disraeli)
1984: All generalizations are false, including this one. (Attributed to Alexander Chase)
Below are additional details for selected citations in chronological order.
Robert Frost? Lillian Russell? Fliegende Blätter? Evan Esar? Anonymous?
Illustration of a birthday cake from Unsplash
Question for Quote Investigator: An old-fashioned quip about vanity and aging states that a diplomat always remembers a person’s birthday but never remembers a person’s age. This joke has been attributed to the famous U.S. poet Robert Frost, but I have been unable to find a solid citation. The subject of the jest is usually a woman. Would you please explore this topic?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match for the core of this joke located by QI appeared as a filler item in a Rochester, New York newspaper in May 1896. The remark was ascribed to a German humor magazine called “Fliegende Blätter” (“Flying Pages”). A diplomat was not mentioned in this version. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:1
Husband — Strange, but my wife always wants me to remember her birthday, but to forget her age.—Fliegende Blatter.
Another instance of the joke appeared as a filler item in a Monmouth, Illinois newspaper in June 1896:2
Many a woman wants her husband to remember her birthday but to forget her age.
Yet, another instance appeared in a Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania newspaper in July 1896:3
It is safe to remember a woman’s birthday, provided you forget her age.
In 1912 a newspaper in Knoxville, Tennessee 4 and papers in several other locations 5 printed an anecdote in which the prominent actress Lillian Russell received credit for a version of the joke using the word “diplomat”:
Miss Lillian Russell, more beautiful than ever, was serving tea at the Professional Woman’s League bazaar at the Waldorf-Astoria. A member of the Spanish legation passed with two charming girls, and Miss Russell said.
“No wonder that young man is so popular with the ladies. He is a ladies’ diplomat.”
“How a ladies’ diplomat?” a composer asked. “Well,” explained Miss Russell, “he is the sort of chap who always remembers a woman’s birthday and forgets her age.”
Many years later in 1939 after the quip was already in circulation it was attributed to Robert Frost. Thus, the linkage to Frost was very weak.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
