Quote Investigator® – Page 202

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.

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest dated instance of this type of joke located by QI appeared in December 1994 in a message posted to the Usenet distributed discussion system in a newsgroup called alt.buddha.short.fat.guy. The saying was freestanding without attribution, and it was surrounded by ornamental text. The phrasing employed alluded to ethical precepts. The handle “Ernst Berg” was listed as the sender of the message:¹

-*- Blessed is the Second mouse for he shall inherit the Cheese. -*-

In the common mousetrap design shown above the first mouse attempting to take the cheese out of the trap would probably be injured or killed. The second mouse attempting to retrieve the cheese after the trap has been triggered would probably be successful.

In February 1995 the twisted proverb or anti-proverb version appeared in the Usenet newsgroup rec.games.video.arcade in a message posted by “David Jakovac”. The saying was freestanding and no attribution was given:²

The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese!

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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 from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children

No one seems to know the origin of this saying. Perhaps it was constructed in recent decades, or perhaps it encapsulates the wisdom of previous centuries. Could you attempt to trace this quotation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: A precursor statement was attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde in the 1936 book “Oscar Wilde Discovers America” by Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith. The remark appeared in a section of the book discussing Wilde’s visit to Canada in 1882. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

“The things of nature do not really belong to us,” he said; “we should leave them to our children as we have received them.”

A separate QI article about the quotation above is available here.

The earliest close match appeared in the 1971 book “The Unforeseen Wilderness: An Essay on Kentucky’s Red River Gorge” by influential environmental activist Wendell Berry who emphasized the desirability of preserving natural areas and adapting a long-range perspective about the environment:²

We can learn about it from exceptional people of our own culture, and from other cultures less destructive than ours. I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children…

The wording in the passage above did not exactly match the modern instance of the saying, but QI conjectures that later expressions evolved from Berry’s remark.

In May 1971 Berry published an essay in “Audubon” magazine titled “The One-Inch Journey” which was based on chapter 2 of the book mentioned above. The excerpt above was reprinted in the essay, and thus it achieved wider dissemination. This appearance also linked the saying to the Audubon Society.³

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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 show the core of the statement:

1) News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising.

2) News is something which somebody wants suppressed: all the rest is advertising

3) News is anything anybody wants to suppress; everything else is public relations.

4) Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed; everything else is public relations.

These remarks do differ, but I think it makes sense to group them all together. Press baron William Randolph Hearst and renowned author George Orwell have both been credited with originating this saying. Could you explore this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest strongly matching expression found by QI was published in 1918 in a New York periodical called “The Fourth Estate: A Newspaper for the Makers of Newspapers”. The words were printed on a sign at a journalist’s desk, and no precise attribution was given. Boldface has been added to excerpts:¹

“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news,” is the sentiment expressed in a little framed placard on the desk of L. E. Edwardson, day city editor of the Chicago Herald and Examiner.

In the following decades the saying evolved and instances were employed by or attributed to a wide variety of prominent news people including William Randolph Hearst, Alfred Harmsworth, Brian R. Roberts, and Katharine Graham.

This entry was improved with the help of top researcher Barry Popik who adroitly explored this topic and shared the results at his website “The Big Apple”.²

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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 the famous wit Oscar Wilde. Who said it first?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In July 1870 an article by Mark Twain was published in “The Galaxy” magazine. One section of the article expressed unhappiness with the aphorisms popularized by Benjamin Franklin. Twain stated the following desire:¹

… snub those pretentious maxims of his; which he worked up with a great show of originality out of truisms that had become wearisome platitudes as early as the dispersion from Babel …

Twain constructed a comical adage that he farcically attributed to Franklin:

Never put off till to-morrow what you can do day after to-morrow just as well.—B. F.

This is the earliest evidence QI has found for this type of quip from Twain or Wilde. The word “the” was omitted before the phrase “day after to-morrow”. A similar adage was credited to Oscar Wilde in a biography published in 1946, and the details are given further below. However, this evidence was weak because Wilde died decades earlier in 1900.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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 King famously replied:

Mad, is he? Then I hope he will bite some of my other generals and make them mad, too.

The earliest citations I have seen for an instance of this humorous exchange appeared in the twentieth century. Is there any earlier evidence?

Reply from Quote Investigator: King George II lived from 1683 to 1760, and James Wolfe died in battle in 1759. The first citation QI has located was printed in a book in 1786 titled “Letters and Poems by the Late Mr. John Henderson with Anecdotes of His Life”. Wolfe was not identified by name, but the King’s advisor was identified as the Duke of Newcastle:¹

It brought to my recollection an anecdote I have heard of his late majesty, who, naming an officer that he intended should command in an expedition of some consequence, was told by the Duke of Newcastle that “the gentleman was by no means eligible for so important a station, being positively mad.” Is he, replied the king, he shall go for all that, and before he sets out I wish to my God he would bite some of my Generals, and make them mad too.”

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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 repeatedly mispronounced it as “Margott”, i.e., she pronounced a “t” at the end of the name. Eventually, Asquith responded with a squelcher:

No, no, Jean. The ‘t’ is silent, as in Harlow.

Do you think this wordplay on “harlot” occurred during an actual conversation or was this dialog constructed afterwards by a comedian? I have seen a citation in 1974, but that date is very late.

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence located by QI was printed in a newspaper gossip column in August 1934. The article discussed a rising young movie actress who used the single name “Margo”. (This Margo was unrelated to Harlow or Asquith.) The title of the article was “Name is ‘Margo’ Without a ‘T'” and it had two meanings. The first meaning was simply a reference to the new actress. The second meaning was a sly allusion to the punchline of the joke under examination.

The gossip columnist did not directly recount the comical anecdote involving Harlow and Asquith because of the censorial sensitivities of the 1930s, and because the reporter was dependent on the good will of movie studios. However, the final sentence of the column shown below established the fact that the joke was in circulation:¹

Apropos Margo, who is discussed in this column, get Fred McFadden, Palace press agent, to tell you the story of Jean Harlow at Margot Asquith’s party.

The second earliest evidence known to QI appeared in a letter dated October 4, 1934 that was located by top-notch researcher Sam Clements. For many years the famous jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the diplomat Lewis Einstein exchanged correspondence. A note from Einstein included a version of the anecdote which he may have heard from Margot Asquith directly. The term “Lady Oxford” in the following passage referred to Asquith who was the Countess of Oxford:²

By way of pleasantry I must relate to you one of our mutual friend Lady Oxford’s latest. Having met Jean Harlow (the original platinum blonde) at a party the latter exuberantly began to call her Margott stressing the final t. Margot (severely) — ‘The final “t” in my christian name is silent, unlike your family name’.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Watch Your Thoughts, They Become Words; Watch Your Words, They Become Actions

Ralph Waldo Emerson? Lao Tzu? Frank Outlaw? Gautama Buddha? Bishop Beckwaith? Father of Margaret Thatcher?

Question for Quote Investigator: What do the following people have in common: Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, supermarket magnate Frank Outlaw, spiritual teacher Gautama Buddha, and the father of Margaret Thatcher? Each one of these individuals has been credited with versions of the following quote:

Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become deeds. Watch your deeds. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Character is everything.

Can you sort out this confusing situation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence of a closely matching expression located by QI was published in a Texas newspaper feature called “What They’re Saying” in May 1977. The saying was ascribed to the creator of a successful U.S. supermarket chain called Bi-Lo:¹

“Watch your thoughts, they become words;
watch your words, they become actions;
watch your actions, they become habits;
watch your habits, they become character;
watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”

FRANK OUTLAW
Late President of the Bi-Lo Stores

QI believes that this saying evolved over many decades. One interesting property that is shared between the modern expression and several precursor sayings involves wordplay. Consider five of the key words in the saying: words, actions, thoughts, character, and habits. The initial letters can be arranged to spell the repeated focal term: w, a, t, c, h. This type of wordplay will be discussed further below.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order

Quote Origin: Why Don’t You Carry a Wrist Watch Like Everyone Else?

Herbert Beerbohm Tree? Frederick Henry Townsend? George du Maurier? Yogi Berra? Mutt and Jeff? An inebriate? A woman carrying packages?

Question for Quote Investigator: I have read several instances of a popular comical anecdote. Two different versions featured baseball Hall-of-Famer Yogi Berra. One night he was presented with a grandfather clock at a banquet dinner. Yogi was struggling to carry the clock down the street when a drunken individual bumped into him.

“Excuse me,” said Yogi.
The drunk looked at him unhappily and demanded, “Why don’t you carry a wrist watch like everybody else?”

In another version of the story Yogi was inebriated. He collided with a person carrying a large clock, and Yogi delivered the final humorous line.

In a third version of the tale a famous actor and theater manager in England was the protagonist. Herbert Beerbohm Tree observed a man staggering down the street under the weight of a grandfather clock and remarked: “My poor fellow, why not carry a watch?”

Can you clarify the origin of this anecdote?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence of this basic jest known to QI appeared in a cartoon drawn by Frederick Henry Townsend in the London humor magazine Punch in March 1907. Here is the image and the caption:¹

Funny Man. “Pardon me, Sir, but wouldn’t you find it more convenient to carry a watch?”

Top quotation expert and BBC broadcaster Nigel Rees included this key citation in his compilation “Cassell’s Humorous Quotations”.² The joke was noticed across the ocean, and the cartoon was reprinted in The Washington Post in April³ and a Pennsylvanian newspaper in October.⁴

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Let Your Memory Be Your Travel Bag

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: On a website dedicated to travel I saw a quotation credited to the famous Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn:

Own only what you can carry with you; know language, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Is this attribution accurate? A travel tip from Solzhenitsyn seems incongruous.

Reply from Quote Investigator: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did write this in his most famous work “The Gulag Archipelago”. He was discussing his experiences as a prisoner in the forced labor camp system of the former Soviet Union. Any of your belongings could be taken from you forcibly or stealthily by a guard or a fellow prisoner at any time.

If you were lucky enough to be given a two-day supply of bread and sugar Solzhenitsyn recommended eating it in one sitting. Then no one could steal it from you, and you would be released from worrying about it. The context of the quotation was the hardship of imprisonment:¹

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag. Use your memory! Use your memory! It is those bitter seeds alone which might sprout and grow someday.

Look around you—there are people around you. Maybe you will remember one of them all your life and later eat your heart out because you didn’t make use of the opportunity to ask him questions. And the less you talk, the more you’ll hear. Thin strands of human lives stretch from island to island of the Archipelago.

In conclusion, the words were written by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The quote was not originally intended to be light-hearted advice about the joys of travel. Solzhenitsyn was offering advice to compatriots for physical and mental survival.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Kate McClare whose inquiry about this quotation provided the impetus for QI to construct this question.

Update History: On February 23, 2025 the format of the bibliographical notes was updated.

1974, The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, Volume I-II, (Translated from the Russian by Thomas P. Whitney), Quote Page 516 and 517, Publisher: Harper & Row, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎

Quote Origin: Imagination Is More Important Than Knowledge

Albert Einstein? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Many websites credit Albert Einstein with this statement:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

I am skeptical. Are these the words of Einstein?

Reply from Quote Investigator: This remark apparently was made by Einstein during an interview that was published in “The Saturday Evening Post” in 1929. Here is an excerpt showing the context of his comment. The first paragraph below records Einstein’s words; the next sentence is the interviewer speaking; the final paragraph is Einstein speaking again. Boldface has been added to the following passage and some excerpts further below:¹

“I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.”

“Then you trust more to your imagination than to your knowledge?”

“I am enough of the artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.