Quote Investigator® – Page 226

Quote Origin: If You Want Jobs Then Give These Workers Spoons Instead of Shovels

Milton Friedman? William Aberhart? Walter Augustus Wyckoff? Unemployed Worker? Businessman in China? UK Minister of Agriculture?

Question for Quote Investigator:: A popular anecdote in economics states that a visitor at a government worksite was surprised to find numerous workers digging with shovels. Yet, machines could accomplish the task more quickly and efficiently.

Visitor: Why aren’t you using earthmoving equipment?
Supervisor: You don’t understand. This project is designed to employ large numbers of people.
Visitor: I see. If creating jobs is your primary objective, then perhaps you should give the workers spoons instead of shovels.

There are many versions of this tale. Typically, the visitor is a prominent economist such as Milton Friedman. Would you please explore the provenance of this anecdote?

Reply from Quote Investigator:: Different instances of this tale are based in distinct locales that span the globe including: India, China, England, United States, and Canada. The punchline has been attributed to several people including: famous economist Milton Friedman, popular economist Walter Augustus Wyckoff, Canadian politician William Aberhart, an unnamed worker, a businessman touring China, and a UK Minister of Agriculture.

The earliest instance of this anecdote type located by QI appeared in 1901 within “The Chicago Daily Tribune” of Illinois which acknowledged a newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania:¹

An incident which struck me at the time as quite amusing occurred not long since on North Broad street. A steam shovel at work had attracted a large number of spectators, including two Irishmen, who, judging by their appearance, were toilers temporarily out of employment.

As the big shovel at one lick scooped up a whole cartload of dirt and dumped it upon a gondola car, one of the Irishmen remarked: “What a shame, to think of them digging up dirt in that way!” “What do ye mane?” asked his companion. “Well,” said the other, “that machine is taking the bread out of the mouths of a hundred laborers who could do the work with their picks and shovels.” “Right you are, Barney,” said the other fellow.

Just then a man who had been looking on and who had overheard the conversation remarked: “See here, you fellows. If that digging would give work to a hundred men with shovels and picks, why not get a thousand men and give them teaspoons with which to dig up the dirt?” The Irishmen, to their credit, saw the force of the remark and the humor of the situation and joined heartily in the laugh that followed, and one of them added: “I guess you’re right, Captain. The scoop’s the thing after all.” —Philadelphia Public Ledger.

Thus, the core of the anecdote was in circulation by 1901. The teller of the tale and the participants were unnamed.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Three Things Can Happen When You Pass and Two of Them Are Bad

Woody Hayes? Darrell Royal? Bernie Moore?

Question for Quote Investigator: It’s football season and I received an email from a friend with a collection of quotations from coaches and players. One of the sayings about passing the ball is credited to Woody Hayes, but I think it should probably be attributed to Darrell Royal, coach of the Texas Longhorns:

Three things can happen when you throw the ball, and two of them are bad.

Can you determine who first expressed this aphorism?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Candidly, the results of this exploration are confusing. The earliest evidence located by QI appeared in a column by Bud Shrake in the Dallas Morning News in 1962, and it supported the belief that Darrell Royal created and/or popularized this adage:¹

Two plays later Wade threw another pass. The ball was batted into the air and Aggie linebacker Jerry Hopkins intercepted at the Texas 49.

You could almost hear Royal repeating his maxim: “When you throw a pass three things can happen to it, and two of them are bad.”

In 1963 the book “Darrell Royal Talks Football” by Darrell Royal with Blackie Sherrod was published, and it discussed the primary author’s philosophy of coaching. A version of the aphorism was given, and Royal did not give credit to anyone else when he used the expression:²

I might say this: we’ve always been a running team and I’m sure we will continue to be so. (We’ve been criticized for it, I might add.) But I’ve always felt that three things can happen to you whenever you throw the football, and two of them are bad. You can catch the ball, you can throw it incomplete, or have it intercepted.

Over the years other individuals have been connected to the saying. For example, in 1966 Woody Hayes, the celebrated football coach of the Ohio State Buckeyes, was attached to the aphorism:³

Woody also professes to the theory that when you pass, three things can happen and two of them are bad.

The early evidence points strongly to Darrell Royal as the creator of this saying. But there is a key piece of counter-evidence that appeared in an interview that Royal gave in 2005 that was published in The Columbus Dispatch. Royal himself attributed the maxim to Woody Hayes according to the reporter:⁴

“Now, you can hear some stuff in a barbershop. You can pick up some wisdom there. I’m just a model of the people I’ve been around in my life, and Woody was one of those people.”

Royal credits Ohio State’s Hayes, his contemporary and friend, with being the first one to say three things can happen on a pass play and two of them are bad.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Twenty Years From Now You Will Be More Disappointed By The Things You Didn’t Do Than By The Ones You Did Do

Mark Twain? H. Jackson Brown? Sarah Frances Brown? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The Virgin Galactic company of Richard Branson plans to offer suborbital spaceflights for tourists. The organization put together a beautiful brochure containing the following quotation credited to Mark Twain:¹

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Can you tell me where this was written by Mark Twain? I have not been able to locate this astute piece of advice in his novels or essays.

Reply from Quote Investigator: QI will be unable to tell you where to find this passage in the works of Twain because he never wrote it. Yet, the words are regularly credited to him. For example, the April 20, 1998 issue of The New Yorker magazine printed a vibrant full page advertisement depicting an ocean scene that prominently featured a version of this saying with the label “attributed to Mark Twain”.²

The website TwainQuotes.com edited by Barbara Schmidt is a key resource for checking quotations attributed to Twain, and Schmidt states that “the attribution cannot be verified. The quote should not be regarded as authentic”.³

The earliest appearance that QI has located occurred in 1990. The bestselling author H. Jackson Brown Jr. published a book containing the quotation, but he did not take credit for it. The work titled “P.S. I Love You” contained a collection of wise aphorisms from Brown’s mother, Sarah Frances Brown. Each page contained one thought, and the advice under investigation was printed on page 13. Each remark was prefaced with “P.S.” and ended with “I love you, Mom”.⁴

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Spoiler Warning: This post contains a spoiler for an early version of the popular game Minecraft.

Quote Origin: You Can’t Wait for Inspiration. You Have To Go After It With a Club

Jack London? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: I belong to a great group for writers in Florida, and a recent announcement message on our mailing list included a motivational quotation attributed to the author and journalist Jack London:

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Since London died in 1916 I thought I would be able to find a citation before that date, but I am having difficulty obtaining one. Did London actually say this or something similar?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Yes, London did express this thought. But the original wording he used was more picturesque and perhaps less intelligible to the modern reader. He referred to loafing and said “light out after it” instead of “go after it”:¹

Don’t loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don’t get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.

London was a prolific writer who depended on his literary skills for his livelihood. This saying is from a 1905 essay of instruction that he wrote titled “Getting Into Print” which appeared in several publications under different titles and was reprinted multiple times over the years.

Quote Origin: A Story Should Have a Beginning, a Muddle and an End

Peter De Vries? Philip Larkin? C. E. Lombardi? Larry Gelbart? Avi’s Young Reader? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: When faced with the difficult task of writing effectively some people insist on a guaranteed formula. As a confirmed scribbler I am convinced that there is no formula, but I laughed when I heard this:

A story consists of a beginning, a muddle, and an end.

Can you figure out who first articulated this comical blueprint? It has been credited to the English poet Philip Larkin and the American humorist Peter De Vries.

Reply from Quote Investigator: Both of these attributions are backed by good evidence. Peter De Vries used a version of the phrase to describe his novel “Tunnel of Love” in the 1950s, and Philip Larkin called it a “classic formula” for a book in the 1970s.

Yet, the earliest instance located by QI appeared in “The Yale Literary Magazine” in 1909. The author C. E. Lombardi published a short fictional sketch in which two friends exchanged banter while attending a theatrical production in New York:¹

The play made its start pleasantly enough but since it was a musical comedy Meriweather felt it incumbent to produce some slighting remark.

“This sort of thing, at least, hasn’t changed much while I’ve been away from New York,” he said.

“They keep the same form,” said Fairfield; “a beginning, a muddle, and an end.”

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Writing Is Easy; You Just Open a Vein and Bleed

Thomas Wolfe? Red Smith? Paul Gallico? Friedrich Nietzsche? Ernest Hemingway? Gene Fowler? Jeff MacNelly? Anonymous?

**Public domain illustration of a hand writing**

Question for Quote Investigator: Whenever I have trouble writing I am reminded of a family of sayings which employ a gruesomely expressive metaphor to describe the difficult process of composition. Here are three instances:

(1) Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.

(2) There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

(3) Writing a column is easy. You just sit at your typewriter until little drops of blood appear on your forehead.

I have seen statements like this credited to the prominent sports columnist Red Smith and to the literary figures Thomas Wolfe and Ernest Hemingway. Could you explore this quotation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: There is significant evidence that Walter Wellesley “Red” Smith used a version of this quote by 1949. In April of that year the influential and widely syndicated newspaper columnist Walter Winchell wrote. Boldface has been added to excerpts:¹

Red Smith was asked if turning out a daily column wasn’t quite a chore. …”Why, no,” dead-panned Red. “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

This is the earliest known attribution to Smith and it was located by top-notch researcher Bill Mullins. But a few years earlier another novelist and highly-paid sportswriter used the same metaphor to describe the often arduous task of putting words down on paper. In the 1946 book “Confessions of a Story Writer” Paul Gallico wrote:²

It is only when you open your veins and bleed onto the page a little that you establish contact with your reader. If you do not believe in the characters or the story you are doing at that moment with all your mind, strength, and will, if you don’t feel joy and excitement while writing it, then you’re wasting good white paper, even if it sells, because there are other ways in which a writer can bring in the rent money besides writing bad or phony stories.

Today Gallico is perhaps best known for the novel “The Poseidon Adventure” which was made into a blockbuster disaster movie in 1972. The popular work was remade for television and for theatrical release in the 2000s. He also wrote the 1941 story “Lou Gehrig: Pride of the Yankees” that was made into the successful film “The Pride of the Yankees”.

Here are additional selected citations.

Quote Origin: Computer Memory: 640K Ought to be Enough for Anyone

Bill Gates? James E. Fawcette? Nancy Andrews? Jerry Pournelle? InfoWorld? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Bill Gates is the one of the richest men in the world, but that does not mean that he correctly foresaw the future. In the early days of the personal computer industry Gates supposedly said the following about the IBM PC:

640K ought to be enough for anyone.

The term 640K refers to 640 kilobytes of computer memory. But these days a computer often has a capacious memory that is tens of thousands of times larger, and this size continues to grow. The 640K limitation was once a real headache for programmers and users. This quote is notorious among computer enthusiasts and is typically dated to 1981, but Bill Gates has denied that he ever said it. Could you try to trace it?

Reply from Quote Investigator: During the 1990s Bill Gates wrote a syndicated newspaper column in which he answered questions from the public. When he was asked about the saying in 1996 he replied:¹

I’ve said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time.

The need for memory increases as computers get more potent and software gets more powerful. In fact, every couple of years the amount of memory address space needed to run whatever software is mainstream at the time just about doubles. This is well-known.

However, the computer periodical InfoWorld did attribute several statements to Gates that expressed acceptance or satisfaction regarding the 640K computer memory limitation. Top quotation expert Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, located the earliest version of this sentiment credited to Gates:²

When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory. — William Gates, chairman of Microsoft

These words appeared at the beginning of an editorial written by James E. Fawcette published in the April 29, 1985 issue of InfoWorld. But no precise reference was given, and the words did not occur as part of an interview.

QI has located the earliest instance of a close match to the saying specified by the questioner. This is the version that is often attributed to Gates today. It appeared in InfoWorld magazine in January 1990 in an article that presented a timeline for the development of the PC industry in the 1980s. The remark ascribed to Gates was placed in quotation marks:³

IBM introduces the PC and, with Microsoft, releases DOS (“640K ought to be enough for anyone” — Bill Gates)

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Update: Not Everything That Counts Can be Counted

Albert Einstein? William Bruce Cameron? Hilliard Jason? Stephen Ross? Lord Platt? George Pickering?

Quote Investigator: QI has updated the entry about a popular quotation attributed to Einstein. The saying combines two distinct but related phrases:

Not everything that can be counted counts.
Not everything that counts can be counted.

The entry now presents earlier evidence concerning these phrases. In addition, citations from medical journals point to a new contender for authorship of the adage named Stephen Ross. Here is a link to the updated article.

Quote Origin: The Only Time an Aircraft Has Too Much Fuel On Board Is When It Is On Fire

Charles Kingsford-Smith? Ernest K. Gann? TWA Captain? Yachtsman? Apocryphal? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: In the aviation world there is an axiom that avers:

The only time an aircraft has too much fuel on board is when it is on fire.

This pearl of wisdom is commonly attributed to the pioneer Australian aviator Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, but a bit of Google-diving turns up no definitive sourcing. Would the QI be motivated to have a go?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Charles Kingsford-Smith was a top aviator, and he often had to worry about whether he had an adequate supply of fuel, but QI has been unable to trace the quotation back to him.

Instead, the maxim was used by another famous pilot who was noted for writing best-sellers that became Hollywood movies. In 1974 the book “Ernest K. Gann’s Flying Circus” was published, and it contained the earliest appearance of the saying that QI has located. In the following passage the author Gann poses and answers a rhetorical question about the DC-3 airplane (boldface added):¹

“What happens if one engine quits?”

According to my recollection most DC-3s eventually arrived at their destination if they carried enough fuel. In my private manual I firmly believed the only time there was too much fuel aboard any aircraft was if it was on fire. As for single engine emergencies, I had enough familiarity with the proper mixture of fright, sweat, and faith to remain convinced “it can’t happen to me.”

Gann worked as a pilot for American Airlines and Matson Airlines. He wrote several popular books including “The High and the Mighty,” “Island in The Sky,” and “Fate Is the Hunter.” All three of these works were made into motion pictures with major stars such as Glenn Ford and John Wayne.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Military Command: Send Three and Fourpence. We’re Going to a Dance

World War I? World War II? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Years ago some military orders had to be sent via a series of radio relays. Each radio operator would listen to a command and then repeat it to the next operator in a series. If you have ever played the game “broken telephone” or “Chinese whispers” you may know the result of this process. Here is an example I heard of the initial military order and the final result:

Send reinforcements. We are going to advance.
Send three and fourpence. We are going to a dance.

Can you determine if there is any truth to this anecdote? During which war did this happen? I think this tale may have been created before radio communication was common.

Reply from Quote Investigator: There are several interrelated stories about garbled communication during military exercises. The content of the messages varies, but the tales probably share a common ancestor because the message text overlaps. For example, the transformation of the phrase “send reinforcements” into “send three and fourpence” is a common feature of several anecdotes. The earliest version found by QI was published in 1914 under the title “Altered in Transit” in the “Temperance Caterer” periodical of London. This story may reflect the wishful thinking of hungry soldiers:¹

Whilst on manoeuvres, a brigadier commanding a certain brigade stationed in Aldershot passed the word to the nearest colonel to him :—

“Enemy advancing from the left flank. Send reinforcements.”

By the time it reached the end of the right flank the message was received :—

“Enemy advancing with ham-shanks. Send three and fourpence!”

A version similar to the one given by the questioner appeared by 1916. Over time the tale spinners exercised substantial creativity, and the messages started to refer to wild Italians and pressing pants. Some versions in the United States localized the currency and spoke of cents instead of pence.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.