Quote Investigator® – Page 206

Those Who Dance Are Considered Insane by Those Who Can’t Hear the Music

Friedrich Nietzsche? Megan Fox? Anne Louise Germaine de Staël? John Stewart? Norman Flint? Science Fiction fans? Angela Monet? Rumi? George Carlin? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: The following statement is credited to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche:

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Yet, I have never seen a precise pointer that stated where in the works of Nietzsche this quotation appeared. I know that Nietzsche suffered a mental breakdown, so he may have been sympathetic to individuals who were labeled insane. I also know that music was very important in his thoughts and philosophy.

The quotation is so popular that the actress and supermodel Megan Fox decided to get the words tattooed across her back and side. Astutely, Fox did not include an attribution for her tattoo. If she wanted to append a credit whose name should be rendered in ink?

Quote Investigator: QI has not yet located substantive evidence that Nietzsche wrote or said the statement given above. In 2003 a message in the large distributed discussion system called Usenet attributed the quote to Nietzsche. The message appeared in the alt.quotations newsgroup.[ref]2003 August 28, Usenet Newsgroup: alt.quotations, Subject: IM Friedrich Nietzsche, From: dougk. (Google Usenet groups archive; Accessed June 5, 2012) link.[/ref] But Nietzsche died in 1900, so 2003 is an extremely late date.

A precursor to this statement appeared in the early Nineteenth century. In 1813 the influential writer Anne Louise Germaine de Staël published the work “De l’Allemagne” in French. The English title was “Germany”, and in 1814 an excerpt was printed in “The Universal Magazine”. Madame de Staël envisioned herself watching a ballroom filled with dancers, and she imagined her reaction if she had been unable to hear the music:[ref]1814 April, The Universal Magazine, “On the Moravian Mode of Worship by Madame De Stael [From her ‘Germany’]”, Start Page 296, Quote Page 296, Column 2, Printed for Sherwood, Neely, and Jones, London. (Google Books full view) [Thanks to poster RobotWisdom who shared this cite at the “Shortcuts” blog of the Guardian newspaper here] link [/ref]

… sometimes even in the habitual course of life, the reality of this world disappears all at once, and we feel ourselves in the middle of its interests as we should at a ball, where we did not hear the music; the dancing that we saw there would appear insane.

This figurative language was employed powerfully to illustrate an episode of dissociation. Madame de Staël was temporarily alienated from the normal rush of living, and the actions of those around her seemed purposeless and absurd.

In 1927 a version similar to the common modern examples was printed in “The Times” newspaper of London where it was labelled an old proverb. This concise instance used the word “mad” instead of “insane”:[ref] 1927 February 16, The Times (UK), The Dance, Page 15, Column 4, London, England. (Times Digital Archive GaleGroup)[/ref]

They who dance are thought mad by those who hear not the music. The truth of the old proverb was never more surely borne out that it is just now.

This phrasing is distinct, but the core idea is the same. In recent times, the comedian George Carlin helped to popularize the phrase as shown further below.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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I Can Think of No More Stirring Symbol of Man’s Humanity to Man than a Fire Engine

Kurt Vonnegut? Winston Niles Rumfoord? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: A good friend of mine is a volunteer firefighter, and he asked me about a quote credited to Kurt Vonnegut:

I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine

This statement can be found on many websites and it is almost always attached to Vonnegut, but I have not found any citation identifying when it was written or spoken. Past experience has made me very skeptical about unsupported attributions to Vonnegut.

I still remember a humorous speech titled “Wear Sunscreen” that was distributed widely on the internet under Vonnegut’s name [IFVN]. But the real author was a Chicago Tribune columnist named Mary Schmich [MSWS].

Did Vonnegut really praise fire engines?

Quote Investigator: The quotation above was spoken by a character named Winston Niles Rumfoord in Kurt Vonnegut’s early science fiction novel “The Sirens of Titan” published in 1959. In the story the primary protagonist Malachi Constant was returning to Earth after a series of ordeals, and he was greeted by Rumfoord as follows [KVST]:

“Welcome, Space Wanderer,” blatted Rumfoord’s oleomargarine tenor from the Gabriel horns on the wall. “How meet it is that you should come to us on the bright red pumper of a volunteer fire department. I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine. Tell me, Space Wanderer, do you see anything here—anything that makes you think you may have been here before?”

Rumfoord was a complex and sometimes cruel figure with extraordinary powers in the political and quasi-religious realms who was partially based on Franklin D. Roosevelt. Of course, the pronouncements of a character in a novel do not always reflect the beliefs of the author. Indeed, sometimes the pronouncements do not even accurately represent the attitudes of the character. But there is evidence that Vonnegut was appreciative of fire engines and firefighters.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading “I Can Think of No More Stirring Symbol of Man’s Humanity to Man than a Fire Engine”

I Paint with My Prick

Pierre-Auguste Renoir? Jean Renoir? Ōe Kenzaburō? Jeanette Winterson? D. H. Lawrence? Bernard Malamud? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: The master painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir is my favorite Impressionist artist. For many years he has been credited with the following outrageous facetious quotation:

I paint with my prick.

Recently, I was surprised to discover that the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has placed this phrase in their Misquotations section. This important reference work presented the following phrase attributed to Renoir in 1919 and suggested that the quote above may have been inaccurately derived from it [OXPR]:

It’s with my brush that I make love

Could you explore the provenance of these phrases?

Quote Investigator: There is substantive evidence connecting Pierre-Auguste Renoir to both of the quotes listed above. QI believes that the first quote is based on a conversational exchange that occurred between Renoir and a journalist that was witnessed by several individuals and reported by his son. In 1962 Jean Renoir, the prominent filmmaker and son of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, published a biography of his father. An English translation was also released in 1962, and it contained the following significant passage about the elder Renoir [JRAR]:

Once, towards the end of his life, I heard him make the following rejoinder to a journalist who seemed to be astonished by his crippled hands:
“With such hands, how do you paint?” the man asked, crudely.
“With my prick,” replied Renoir, really vulgar for once.

It took place in the dining room at Les Collettes. There were a half-dozen or so visitors present. No one laughed at his quip. For what he said was a striking expression of the truth; one of those rare testimonies, so seldom expressed in the history of the world, to the miracle of the transformation of matter into spirit.

The quotation ascribed to Pierre-Auguste Renoir can be constructed by compressing the dialog of the journalist and the painter into a single direct statement. The elder Renoir died in 1919, so the episode described above occurred decades before the biography was released. However, there is additional evidence for the quotation that was published much earlier. The notorious 1928 erotic classic “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” by D. H. Lawrence contained the following passage in chapter four. The ellipsis appeared in the original text [CLDL]:

Renoir said he painted his pictures with his penis . . . he did too, lovely pictures! I wish I did something with mine.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading “I Paint with My Prick”

Men Occasionally Stumble Over the Truth, But They Pick Themselves Up and Hurry Off

Winston Churchill? Simon Singh? Stanley Baldwin? The Reader’s Digest? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: Simon Singh is a fine author who writes knowledgeably about mathematical and scientific topics. His book “Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe” credited the following words to the statesman Winston Churchill [WCSS]:

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

This quotation was used by Singh during a discussion about serendipity and the development of antibiotics. When Alexander Fleming examined some bacterial cultures that had been contaminated with mold he saw an avenue toward the epoch-making discovery of penicillin Other scientists probably threw away similar contaminated cultures in exasperation.

I think it is a marvelous saying, but I have not yet located a solid citation. Could you determine if Churchill made this remark?

Quote Investigator: The earliest published evidence located by QI for a similar quote appeared in Reader’s Digest magazine in 1942, and the words were ascribed to Winston Churchill. Interestingly, the saying was about an individual unnamed man and not about men in general or people in general [WCR1]:

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth but he always picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened. (Winston Churchill)

An important reference work “Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill’s Wit” was published by Kay Halle in 1966. Halle knew the leader well, and she interviewed him and many of his friends while creating the compendium. Halle stated that the quote was aimed at Churchill’s political adversary Stanley Baldwin who was Prime Minister between 1935 and 1937. The wording given in the reference differed slightly from the version in the Reader’s Digest [WCKH]:

Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.

Halle used the label “Ear-witness” for the quote to indicate that she heard it though mutual friends and not directly from Churchill. Also, she estimated that it was said around 1936.

In 1945 the syndicated newspaper columnist Charles G. Sampas printed a modern variant of the saying that referred to men in general instead of a specific man [WCCS]:

Men occasionally stumble over truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened. (Churchill)

Here are additional selected citations and details in chronological order.

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You Only Live Once – YOLO

Drake? Schlitz Beer? Fritz Lang? Honoré de Balzac? Joe E. Lewis? Frank Sinatra? Fyodor Dostoevsky? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: In 2011 a song called “The Motto” by Drake was released, and it contained this expression:

You only live once.

The acronym YOLO was popularized by this song, I think. But I have heard the catch phrase for decades. I recall that the famous crooner Frank Sinatra entertained concert goers with the following version:

You only live once, and the way I live, once is enough.

Could you tell me about the history of this aphorism?

Quote Investigator: The actor and hip hop artist Aubrey Drake Graham records music under the name Drake. The song “The Motto” by Drake featuring Lil Wayne was released in November 2011 and was a hit. The lyrics included the phrase “You only live once” and the term YOLO along with the following repeated chorus “We bout it every day, every day, every day.”

The acronym YOLO was popularized by Drake, but it has been circulating for decades. The Associated Press news service in 1968 published an article titled “Fort Lauderdale: The City of Boats” which included a discussion of the creative names assigned to yachts and other watercraft. Emphasis in excerpts added by QI:[ref] 1968 June 30, Florida Today, Fort Lauderdale: The City of Boats (Associated Press), Quote Page 42, Column 3, Cocoa, Florida. (Newspapers_com)[/ref]

Naming the vessels, plain or fancy, is a chore that delights some owners. One fad is acronyms, initials of a phrase that spell a word of sorts.

The Pitoa translates “Patience is the Only Answer.” Tica is not named for an Aztec chieftain: It means, “This I Can’t Afford.” Yolo is short for “You Only Live Once.”

The above citation is the earliest evidence known to QI of the acronym together with its modern meaning. Thanks to top researcher Peter Reitan who located it and shared it with QI.

The general expression: “You only live once” (without YOLO) has a very long history. The precise phrasing of the sentiment is variable. For example, sometimes the pronoun “we” is used instead of “you” to yield: “We only live once”. Also, sometimes the word order is altered to produce: “We live only once”.

The earliest exact match for “You only live once” found by QI occurred in an 1896 English translation of the French work “La Comédie Humaine” (“The Human Comedy”) by the famed novelist Honoré de Balzac. The statement appeared in a passage describing a free-spending pair of characters:[ref] 1896, The Edition Definitive of the La Comédie Humaine by Honoré de Balzac, Translated into English, [The Human Comedy], Volume 5, Page 74, Printed for Subscribers only by George Barrie & Son, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (Google Books full view) link[/ref]

… the couple made up, counting their New Year’s gratuities an income of sixteen hundred francs, all of which they spent, for they lived better than the majority of the common people. “You only live once,” said Madame Cibot.

Here are additional selected citations and details in chronological order.
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There Is No Right Way to Do the Wrong Thing

Toby Keith? Charles Jewett? W. Adam? Seneca the Younger? Waylon Jennings? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: A song by the country music superstar Toby Keith includes the following words in the chorus:

Ain’t no right way,
To do the wrong thing,

The song is on the album “White Trash With Money” which was released in 2006. More than a decade ago I started to use the same saying:

There’s no right way to do the wrong thing.

Yet, I do not recall hearing this phrase before 2000. Is this a modern proverb?

Quote Investigator: Some researchers thought the phrase might be modern, i.e., twentieth century, but a major new reference work: “The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs” by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R Shapiro dispelled that notion. The authors found a citation before 1900 and placed the phrase in a special appendix listing: “No Longer Modern Proverbs” [DMRW].

In fact, the aphorism has a long history. In 1850 an article about the relationship between Britain and India was published in the U.S. periodical “De Bow’s Southern and Western Review”. The article criticized the dominance of Britain [DBWA]:

They stand in the relation of conquerors and conquered; of arbitrary rulers and subject masses; of masters and slaves-without common associations, …

The phrase was used when the author discussed how Britain should rule India [DBWA]:

There is no right way of doing a wrong thing; and while the relation itself is allowed to continue, the mode of acting under that relation must partake of its vicious and unnatural character.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

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Quote Origin: Do Good Anyway. The Paradoxical Commandments

Mother Teresa? Kent M. Keith? Dempsey Byrd? Howard Ferguson? E. T. Gurney? Lucinda Vardey? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Mother Teresa is credited with a very popular collection of wise rules. Here are the first two:

People are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish ulterior motives; Be kind anyway.

Usually there are between eight and ten statements, and each one ends with the word “anyway”. The precise phrasing for each statement varies. In addition, the collection ends with the following coda:

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; It was never between you and them anyway.

Did Mother Teresa create this valuable set of principles?

Reply from Quote Investigator: No. The original collection of sayings was created by a college student named Kent M. Keith and published in 1968 in a pamphlet titled “The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council”. Below are the original expressions given in the pamphlet. To simplify exposition a two-digit number has been added before each statement. There was no coda in the original text:¹

01: People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

02: If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

03: If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

04: The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

05: Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

06: The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.

07: People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

08: What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

09: People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.

10: Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

Note that Kent M. Keith has a website that includes a page listing the expressions above which he calls the “Paradoxical Commandments of Leadership”. Keith discusses the origin of the commandments, and his claims are consistent with the documentary evidence that QI has located.

The statements provided by the questioner do differ somewhat from the expressions given by Keith. For example, in commandment 01 the ordering of the initial three terms is different: “unreasonable, illogical and self-centered” versus “illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.” Also, the final phrase is different: “Forgive them anyway” versus “Love them anyway.”

In commandment 02 the word “kind” is used instead of “good”. The first phrase is: “If you are kind” versus “If you do good.” The final phrase is: “Be kind anyway” versus “Do good anyway.”

Indeed, the sayings did evolve during decades of transmission, and multiple variants have been published in newspapers, books, and magazines. Sometimes entire statements have been deleted. But Keith’s “Paradoxical Commandments” function as the foundational text, and other sets have been directly or indirectly derived from them.

The commandments have been incorrectly ascribed to other individuals including: Dempsey Byrd, Howard Ferguson, E. T. Gurney, and Mother Teresa. The earliest misattribution located by QI appeared in 1972. Details are given further below. Note that incorrect attributions often occur even when a person does not actively seek to claim credit.

The frequent ascription to Mother Teresa stems from the misreading of a book about the famous Catholic charity worker called “A Simple Path” that was compiled by Lucinda Vardey and released in 1995. The page preceding the appendices was titled “ANYWAY”, and it presented versions of eight of the ten statements under investigation. Statements 06 and 07 were omitted. A note at the bottom of the page said:²

From a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children’s home in Calcutta.

So the words were not directly attributed to Mother Teresa. Instead, some person at a children’s home operated by her charity organization posted a note with the sayings. Nevertheless, one or more readers of the book decided incorrectly to credit Mother Teresa with the sayings.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Everything Is Energy and That’s All There Is To It. Match the Frequency of the Reality You Want

Albert Einstein? Darryl Anka? Bashar? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: Many odd quotations are credited to the brilliant scientist Albert Einstein, and recently I have seen another peculiar example featured on Facebook and multiple websites:

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

I do not think this is physics, and I do not think these are Einstein’s words. The statement appears similar to tenets popularized in New Age books and magazines. Can you find out more about this quotation?

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Albert Einstein said this. It does not appear in the comprehensive collection of quotations “The Ultimate Quotable Einstein” from Princeton University Press [UQEI].

The earliest evidence QI can find for this quote is in a digital archive captured in April 2000 of a webpage from a site called bashar.org. The data can be viewed by using the “Wayback Machine”, a service provided by the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization which offers permanent storage and access to massive collections of digitized materials.

A set of computers at the Internet Archive regularly crawl the web and download accessible webpages. The data is stored for later examination by researchers, historians, and the curious. The “Wayback Machine” provides a front-end to a search engine that allows a user to view the contents of an individual webpage as it appeared on dates from the past. However, only a limited number of webpages and dates are available for study.

On April 8, 2000 a computer at the Internet Archive visited the website bashar.org and downloaded a webpage that included the quotation under investigation in the last paragraph. The title at the top of the page was “The Ides of March”. The words on the page were not attributed to Albert Einstein. Instead, the name Darryl Anka appeared at the bottom of the page along with a copyright symbol and a 1996 date. The webpage was likely created sometime between 1996 and April 2000.

The Wikipedia entry for Darryl Anka states that he worked as a special effects artist for several motion pictures. In addition, it states that Anka is known as a channeler [WKDA]:

Anka claims that he began to communicate, through trance-channeling, with an extra-terrestrial entity called Bashar in 1983. He describes Bashar as existing in a parallel reality, in a time frame that we perceive as the future.

The webpage at bashar.org from April 2000 explicated the philosophy of Bashar as channeled by Anka. The page stated: “Everything you could ever want, it has already been given to you”. Here is an additional excerpt to illuminate the viewpoint being espoused [DABS]:

Everything is here and now, but in various states of visibility and invisibility depending upon the frequency that you are operating on, and that means the belief system, the definitions that you buy into most strongly.

The background given above might help the reader to interpret the final paragraph on the webpage [DABS]:

Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is physics.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading “Everything Is Energy and That’s All There Is To It. Match the Frequency of the Reality You Want”

Denial Is Not a River in Egypt

Florence Kerns? Ray Hallinan? Herb Caen? Pauline Tymon? Larry Pickard? David Crosby? Joe Bob Briggs? Al Franken? Stuart Smalley? Anonymous?

Dear Quote Investigator: The Saturday Night Live television program once featured skits with a character named Stuart Smalley who was played by the comedian and former senator Al Franken. Smalley was enamored with self-help programs and often used the following catch phrase:

Denial is not a river in Egypt.

I have also heard a very similar phrase credited to Mark Twain:

Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

Could you explore the origin of this quotation?

Quote Investigator: There is no substantive evidence that Mark Twain used this expression. Al Franken, in the persona of Stuart Smalley, did use this saying, but his satirical character was introduced to the television audience in 1991. Franken was employing a phrase that was already in circulation in the domain of self-help and addiction counseling.

The underlying pun has a long history. The earliest evidence known to QI appeared in the “Reading Times” of Reading, Pennsylvania in April 1931. Eighth grade student Florence Kerns won a contest by submitting the following wordplay joke which fit a question-answer template:[ref] 1931 April 11, Reading Times, Section: Junior Times, Florence Takes Prize for Joke, Quote Page 13, Column 1, Reading, Pennsylvania. (Newspapers_com) [/ref]

Question: Do you know how to use “denial” in a sentence?
Answer: Denial river runs through Egypt.

Thanks to ace researcher Bill Mullins who located the citation above and shared it with QI. Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading “Denial Is Not a River in Egypt”

Everybody Steals in Commerce and Industry. I’ve Stolen A Lot Myself

Thomas Edison? Martin André Rosanoff? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: While reading a novel about the remarkable inventor Nikola Tesla I came across a statement credited to Thomas Edison that I find very hard to believe [TLDS]:

Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don’t know how to steal!

Did Edison really say something like this? I know that Tesla and Edison were rivals, and perhaps the author of this Tesla book is biased against Edison. I hesitate to believe that this quotation is accurate.

Quote Investigator: A remark that was nearly identical to the one above was attributed to Edison in an article published in Harper’s magazine in September 1932 titled “Edison in His Laboratory”. The statement began with “everybody” instead of “everyone”. Note that Edison died in 1931, the year before the Harper’s article was printed. The author of the article was Martin André Rosanoff who performed chemical investigations for Edison.

Rosanoff stated that Edison asked him to test the composition of a wax that was used by a rival company because Edison suspected that the other company had stolen a secret formula for the wax. In the following excerpt Rosanoff referred to Edison as “the Old Man” [MRTE]:

The first I knew of this was when the Old Man asked me to investigate it and ascertain whether the rival’s wax was really new. He said I might be called upon to testify in court and urged me to make my experimental study thorough.

Rosanoff performed an exhaustive analysis of the wax and concluded that the rival’s wax was identical in composition to that used by Edison’s company. Rosanoff was angered by this apparent commercial theft, and described the data to Edison [MRTE]:

When I reported my results to the Old Man with spirited indignation at the unsavory ways of his rival, he asked with a merry twinkle of amusement, “What are you so excited about? Everybody steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot myself. But I knew how to steal. They don’t know how to steal—that’s all that’s the matter with them” I said nothing; my breath was taken away.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Continue reading “Everybody Steals in Commerce and Industry. I’ve Stolen A Lot Myself”