Quote Investigator® – Page 203

Quote Origin: The Arc of the Moral Universe Is Long, But It Bends Toward Justice

Martin Luther King? Barack Obama? Theodore Parker? Freemason Commander? Seth Brooks? Jacob Kohn?

Question for Quote Investigator: Civil rights champion Martin Luther King, Jr. once delivered a powerful speech with this resonant line:

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

I was told that this metaphorical framework has a long history that stretches back to the 19th century. Could you examine this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Theodore Parker was a Unitarian minister and prominent American Transcendentalist born in 1810 who called for the abolition of slavery. In 1853 a collection of “Ten Sermons of Religion” by Parker was published and the third sermon titled “Of Justice and the Conscience” included figurative language about the arc of the moral universe:¹

Look at the facts of the world. You see a continual and progressive triumph of the right. I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one, my eye reaches but little ways. I cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; I can divine it by conscience. But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice.

Things refuse to be mismanaged long. Jefferson trembled when he thought of slavery and remembered that God is just. Ere long all America will tremble.

The words of Parker’s sermon above foreshadowed the Civil War fought in the 1860s. The passage was reprinted in later collections of Parker’s works. A similar statement using the same metaphor was printed in a book called “Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry” with a copyright date of 1871 and publication date of 1905. The author was not identified:²

We cannot understand the moral Universe. The arc is a long one, and our eyes reach but a little way; we cannot calculate the curve and complete the figure by the experience of sight; but we can divine it by conscience, and we surely know that it bends toward justice. Justice will not fail, though wickedness appears strong, and has on its side the armies and thrones of power, the riches and the glory of the world, and though poor men crouch down in despair. Justice will not fail and perish out from the world of men, nor will what is really wrong and contrary to God’s real law of justice continually endure.

In 1918 a concise instance of the expression similar to the modern version was printed in a book titled “Readings from Great Authors” in a section listing statements attributed to Theodore Parker:³

The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological.

Quote Origin: If I Could Just Make Them Up On the Spot, I’d Be Famous

Yogi Berra? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: One of the cleverest jokes credited to Yogi Berra is meta-logical. Apparently, some people were following Yogi around and expecting him to utter one of his famous Yogi-isms. Finally, in exasperation he said:

If I could just make ’em up on the spot, I’d be famous.

This response is great because it is a Yogi-ism. He did make it up on the spot, and he is famous for creating exactly this type of expression. But did this really happen?

Reply from Quote Investigator: There is good evidence that Yogi Berra did coin this Yogi-ism. In 2001 Yogi published the volume “When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!” which was subtitled “Inspiration and Wisdom From One of Baseball’s Greatest Heroes”. He told of an episode that occurred at The Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center which is on the campus of Montclair State University adjacent to the Yogi Berra Stadium:¹

People always expect me to be funny. I guess that’s the popular image. “Make up a Yogi-ism,” they’ll say. I can’t. I don’t think I ever said anything intentionally funny in my life. Sometimes the quotes just happen—I just don’t know when I’ll say them.

Once a couple visiting our museum met me and asked if I could say a Yogi-ism. I told them I don’t make them up on the spot. I said if I could, I’d be famous.

The same story was told in the pages of Sport Illustrated magazine in 2011. This version presented the words of Yogi as a direct quotation:²

Once a man and woman came up to him at the museum and asked him to invent a Yogi-ism, on the spot. He told them it doesn’t work that way. He does not just divine these phrases. He said, “If I could just make ’em up on the spot, I’d be famous.” The couple laughed happily. Yogi Berra did not know what was so funny.

In conclusion, based on the testimony of Yogi himself he did make this statement of self-referential wisdom. Also, QI believes that it is unlikely that these words were said by someone else and then reassigned to Yogi.

In Memoriam: Many thanks to my brother Stephen for pointing out the value of researching Yogi-isms.

Acknowledgement: Also, thanks to John for supplying the issue of Sports Illustrated.

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

2002 (Copyright 2001), “When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!” by Yogi Berra with Dave Kaplan, Quote Page 138, Hyperion Paperback Edition, New York. (Amazon Look Inside) ↩︎
2011 July 04, Sports Illustrated, Where Are They Now?: Yogi Berra Will Be a Living Legend Even After He’s Gone by Joe Posnanski, (sportsillustrated.cnn.com; SI Vault; Accessed November 13, 2012) ↩︎

Quote Origin: Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives

Winston Churchill? Abba Eban? An Irishman? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: While watching a cable news channel I heard a commentator present a quotation that he credited to Winston Churchill. When I searched the web I found many different versions:

(1) Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.
(2) The Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted.
(3) You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.
(4) The Americans will always do the right thing… after they’ve exhausted all the alternatives.

No citations were given. The quotation books I consulted did not list this saying under Churchill. Is this statement really from Churchill?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Probably not. The earliest evidence located by QI of a variant of this saying was employed by Abba Eban who was an Israeli politician and diplomat. In March 1967 Eban visited Japan, and the New York Times reported on a remark that he made:¹

Commenting that the passage of time offered the best hope of an end to the problems of Israel and her neighbors, he said: “Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources.”

Note that the above version of the saying did not highlight a specific nation and used the word “resources”. In June 1967 Eban revisited this theme with a comment that was closer to the modern version of the saying. Once again he used the generic referent “nations”:²

… he said he was hopeful a new system of interstate relationships might come to pass because “nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.”

Also in June 1967 Eban delivered a speech at the United Nations which included an instance of the expression as recorded in a Canadian periodical:³

The question is whether there is any reason to believe that such a new era may yet come to pass. If I am sanguine on this point, it is because of a conviction that men and nations do behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. Surely the other alternatives of war and belligerency have now been exhausted.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: The Harder the Life, the Finer the Type

Wilfred Thesiger? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Our local newspaper printed the following quotation and attribution:

“The harder the life, the better the man,” the British desert explorer Sir Wilfred Thesiger is popularly quoted as having said.

Thesiger led an extraordinary life as an explorer and travel writer, and he left behind a large trove of wonderful photographs recording his experiences. I would like to use this saying, but the phrase “popularly quoted” makes me wonder if Thesiger actually said the words. Could you examine this aphorism?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The book “Wilfred Thesiger in Africa” edited by Chris Morton and Philip Grover printed the transcript of an interview that naturalist David Attenborough conducted with Thesiger which was first broadcast on Channel 4 in the UK in August 1994. Bold face has been added here and to passages further below:¹

ATTENBOROUGH: Do you think that hardship and, indeed, suffering bring nobility?

THESIGER: I think the harder the life, the finer the type, yes, and I certainly felt this about the Bedu. When I went there, I felt that the difficulty was going to be living up physically to the hardships of their life. But, on the contrary, it was the difficulty of meeting their high standards: their generosity, their patience, their loyalty, their courage and all these things. And they had a quality of nobility.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: To Love What You Do and Feel That It Matters—How Could Anything Be More Fun?

Katharine Graham? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: I enjoy reading your website and refer to it frequently. I’ve been trying to ascertain the origin of the following:

To love what you do and feel that it matters, how could anything else be more fun?

This quote is all over the place credited to Katharine Graham, but I have found absolutely no source for it.

Reply from Quote Investigator: In October 1974 Ms. Magazine printed a profile of Katharine Graham by the journalist and biographer Jane Howard titled “The Power That Didn’t Corrupt”. At that time, Graham was Chairman of the Board of the Washington Post Company and also the publisher of the newspaper. She was quoted using a closely matching version of the expression above without the word “else”:¹

For myself, I’ve been lucky. It’s as I wrote to Bill and Betty Fulbright: ‘To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?'”

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History

Marilyn Monroe? Eleanor Roosevelt? Anne Boleyn? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: Observing a stream of tweets is a confusing way to learn about a quotation:

Well behaved women rarely make history – Marilyn Monroe
Well-behaved women rarely make history – Eleanor Roosevelt
Well behaved women rarely make history – Anne Boleyn
Well behaved women rarely make history – Unknown
Well behaved women never make history – Marilyn Monroe
Well-behaved women never make history – My senior Quote

Some of these quotes use the word “rarely” and others use the word “never”. Anne Boleyn was beheaded, and I doubt she wanted to enter the history books via an execution. Would you please explore the provenance of this saying?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence of a version of this phrase known to QI appeared in an academic paper in the journal “American Quarterly” in 1976 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. The statement used the word “seldom” instead of “rarely” or “never”:¹

Well-behaved women seldom make history; …

In 1976 Ulrich was a student at the University of New Hampshire, and she earned her Ph.D. in History there in 1980. She is now an eminent Pulitzer-Prize-winning Professor of early American history at Harvard University. The article containing the phrase was titled “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735”. The goal of the paper and much of Ulrich’s work was the recovery of the history of women who were not featured in history books of the past. She was interested in limning the lives of ordinary women who were considered “well-behaved” or “vertuous” (an alternate spelling of virtuous).

The 1990 book “A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812” by Ulrich reprinted and extensively commented on the diary entries of an ordinary midwife in Maine who also acted as a healer. The book illuminated the medical practices and sexual attitudes of the era and was awarded a Pulitzer-Prize and Bancroft Prize.

Here are additional selected citations.

Quote Origin: St Paul’s Cathedral Is Amusing, Awful, and Artificial

King Charles II? Queen Anne? King James II? King William III? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: There is a venerable tale illustrating the shifts that occur in the meanings of words over time. During the construction of the Cathedral of St Paul the monarch of England was taken on a tour of the edifice by the chief architect, Sir Christopher Wren. When the excursion was complete the monarch told Wren that the new building was amusing, awful, and artificial. Remarkably, Wren did not feel insulted; instead, he was greatly pleased. In the 1600s amusing meant amazing, awful meant awe-inspiring, and artificial meant artistic. Is there any support for the accuracy of this entertaining legend?

Reply from Quote Investigator: There are many variants of this story involving different monarchs; for example, King Charles, King James, King William, and Queen Anne are sometimes named. The words with changing meanings include: awful, amusing, pompous, and artificial. The Cathedral of St Paul in London was built between 1675 and 1711 based on a design submitted by Christopher Wren, and this period overlapped the reigns of several monarchs in England. The previous cathedral on the site had been destroyed in a fire.

There is solid evidence that a royal warrant from King Charles II used the phrase “very artificial” while praising Wren’s design. This usage might be the seed that resulted in an efflorescence of different tales in later years. The warrant authorizing the beginning of the construction of the Cathedral of St. Paul was annexed to the surveyor’s drawings, and the document was signed in 1675.

The grandson of the cathedral designer published the text of the warrant in a book of family memoirs in 1750. The royal “We” was capitalized in the warrant. Boldface has been added to the following passage and some excerpts further below:¹ ²

… among divers Designs which have been presented to Us, We have particularly pitched upon one, as well because We found it very artificial, proper, and useful; as because it was so ordered that it might be built and finish’d by Parts: We do therefore by these Presents signify Our Royal Approbation of the said Design, hereunto annexed; and do will and require you forthwith to proceed according to the said Design, beginning with the East-end or Quire, and accomplishing the same with the present Stock of Money, and such Supplies as may probably accrue, according to the Tenor of the Commission to you directed; and for so doing this shall be your Warrant. Given at Our Court at Whitehall, the 14th Day of May, 1675, in the 27th Year of Our Reign.
By His Majesty’s command, HENRY COVENTRY.

The words of praise in the warrant were remembered, and in 1873 an article in Fraser’s magazine stated that the meaning of the word “artificial” had changed. The commentator also noted that Wren’s plans for the cathedral were considerably altered during its multi-decade construction:³

Even his last design, approved by the King and ordered to be carried out, is wonderfully unlike what was really executed. Luckily he had liberty in the prosecution of his work to make some variations; and if his Majesty had lived to see what those variations became he would certainly not have recognised the design which in the royal warrant had been described as being very artificial, proper, and useful! The word artificial, we need scarcely explain, then meant artistic.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Today a Reader; Tomorrow a Leader

Margaret Fuller? W. Fusselman? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: There is a popular motivational quotation that is usually attributed to Margaret Fuller and is displayed on many educational websites:

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Wikiquote lists an extensive collection of quotations from Fuller, but I was unable to find this one. Fuller’s opus “Woman in the Nineteenth Century” is in the Google Books database, but I cannot find the quotation within it. Fuller died in 1850 and stylistically the quotation sounds anachronistic for her time period. What do you think?

Reply from Quote Investigator: QI was unable to find any substantive support for crediting Margaret Fuller with this motto. The earliest evidence appeared in 1926 in an intriguing report published in a journal called “The Library” from the Newark Public Library in New Jersey. The head of the library had received a collection of 43 slogans constructed by students, and that set included the statement under investigation. The creator of the slogan was a student named W. Fusselman. Here is an excerpt from the journal article:¹

SLOGANS FOR A LIBRARY
Invented by Vocational School Boys

Max S. Henig, of the Essex County Vocational School for Boys, in Irvington, N.J., sends me a list of 43 “library slogans” and says “these slogans were written by the members of my classes at the West Orange Essex County Vocational School. They were originated and used as part of a campaign planned to arouse interest in the growth and use of a school library which some of the boys had created by generous donations of books.”

The article noted that the books were lent for four days with a fee of one cent. The expressions were created as part of a classroom exercise, and the journal editors were impressed enough that they reprinted eight of them. Here are the first four together with the names of the students who crafted them:

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. W. Fusselman.
A library is an education on a shelf. H. Ohlandt.
If you read to learn you’re bound to earn. M. Tremper.
A good book read puts you ahead. Howard Fraebel.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: It Has Become Appallingly Obvious That Our Technology Has Exceeded Our Humanity

Albert Einstein? Victor Salva? Sean Patrick Flanery? Jeff Goldblum? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: There’s a quote attributed to Albert Einstein which I like a lot, but I’m not sure if it’s really his:

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

Can you please tell me if it was said or written by him?

Reply from Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Einstein made this statement. It does not appear in the comprehensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press.¹

The earliest evidence of a closely matching quotation known to QI was in a 1995 movie called “Powder” which was written and directed by Victor Salva and starred Sean Patrick Flanery as the main character whose strong paranormal powers drove the plot. Flanery played Jeremy Reed who had an albino-like appearance and was given the nickname Powder. Near the end of the film there was a dialog between Reed and a character named Donald Ripley, a physics teacher played by Jeff Goldblum. The quotation was delivered by Ripley and then Reed immediately ascribed it to Einstein:²

Donald Ripley: It’s become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity.
Jeremy Reed: Albert Einstein.
Donald Ripley: I look at you, and I, I think that someday our humanity might actually surpass our technology.

The statement in this dialog is not identical to the one given by the questioner. For example, Ripley’s remark used the words “clear” and “surpassed” while the questioner’s instance used the words “obvious” and “exceeded”. But semantically they are quite close.

This article concludes after the presentation of one more citation.

Quote Origin: Ancient Tablet: The World is Speedily Coming to an End. Everyone Wants to Write a Book

Ancient Assyrian tablet maker? Egyptian priest? George T. W. Patrick? George S. Godard? Frederick C. Ferry? Cicero? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The world was supposed to end in 2012 according to many individuals. But the entity assigned the task may have been too busy destroying other worlds. The Smithsonian website posted an article titled: “Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn’t Happen” which mentioned the following:¹

An Assyrian clay tablet dating to around 2800 B.C. bears the inscription: “Our Earth is degenerate in these later days; there are signs that the world is speedily coming to an end; bribery and corruption are common; children no longer obey their parents; every man wants to write a book and the end of the world is evidently approaching.”

However, the reference work “Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations” published by the Library of Congress suggested that this story was spurious.² Would you please examine this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: This popular tale of a tablet listing eerily familiar societal criticisms has been in circulation for more than one-hundred years, and many versions of the supposed inscription have been described. The earliest instance known to QI of this prototypical claim was printed in the August 1908 issue of a periodical for bicyclists called “Bassett’s Scrap Book”. A short item contrasted the modern age to ancient times and presented a variation of the epigraph:³

The “good old times” seemed as bad to the “good-old-timers” as the present times seem to the modern man, as shown by the following translation on an inscription on a tablet in the Imperial Museum at Constantinople, Turkey:—

Naram Sin, 5000 B.C.
We have fallen upon evil times, the world has waxed old and wicked. Politics are very corrupt. Children are no longer respectful to their elders. Each man wants to make himself conspicuous and write a book.

There are multiple points of similarity with the version given on the Smithsonian website, but this does not end with the ominous claim that “the end of the world is evidently approaching.”

Also in 1908 the same story was printed in two medical journals: “The Cincinnati Lancet-Clinic”⁴ and “The Medical Fortnightly”⁵ together with a newspaper: “Lexington Herald” of Lexington, Kentucky.⁶

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.