Quote Investigator® – Page 37

Quote Origin: You’re a Ghost Driving a Meat Coated Skeleton Made from Stardust

Gilbert Ryle? Rat_sandwich? Brostoyevskiy? Clifford A. Pickover? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: Halloween is approaching, and the following quasi-philosophical saying fits the holiday theme:

You’re a ghost driving a meat-coated skeleton made from stardust; what do you have to be scared of?

Would you please explore the provenance of this remark?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The chemical elements of life such as carbon, magnesium, and calcium were originally created in the extremely hot and dense cores of stars and subsequently dispersed via stellar explosions. Thus, human bodies are made of stardust.

In 1921 a newspaper in Michigan printed an advertisement that highlighted a pertinent adage. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

We’re All Made of Dust—
But It’s Star Dust!

A Quote Investigator article about the saying “We are made of star-stuff” is available here.

In 1949 philosopher Gilbert Ryle employed the phrase “the Ghost in the Machine” while criticizing mind/body dualism. The quotation under examination implicitly references this notion of ghost.²

QI hypothesizes that the quotation evolved from a collection of antecedents circulating on social media. Here is a sampling of precursor phrases with dates from twitter:

2011 Apr 28: I just feel like I’m a ghost in a heavy meat suit
2012 Jan 29: im just a brain driving a meat suit around life
2012 Jul 30: skeleton wearing a meat-suit
2012 Aug 05: people are still basically just skeletons coated in filthy meat
2012 Oct 29: Ain’t nothin’ but a ghost driving a meat suit
2013 Jan 31: You’re a ghost driving a meat coated skeleton made from stardust, what do you have to be scared of?

The earliest full match given above was tweeted by @rat_sandwich on January 31, 2013 at 4:58 AM EDT. QI tentatively credits @rat_sandwich with the full saying although future researchers may discover superior citations.

Additional details for these citations are given below.

Quote Origin: The Place in Which I’ll Fit Will Not Exist Until I Make It

James Baldwin? Sol Stein? Claudia Roth Pierpont? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: There are powerful pressures to conform and follow the conventions of one’s society. But the renegade does not fit into a pre-existing slot. A prominent literary figure once said:

The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.

Essayist and novelist James Baldwin has received credit for this statement. Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 2004 author and editor Sol Stein published a book about his close association with James Baldwin titled “Native Sons: A Friendship That Created One of the Greatest Works of the 20th Century: Notes of a Native Son”. Stein reprinted a letter he received from Baldwin near the beginning of 1957. This letter contained the quotation. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Please get over the notion, Sol, that there’s some place I’ll fit when I’ve made some ‘real peace’ with myself : the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it. You know and I know that the ‘peace’ of most people is nothing but torpor . . .

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: I Always Advise People Never To Give Advice

P. G. Wodehouse? George Bernard Shaw? Smallwood Bessemer? Bob Chieger? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: A famous wit once offered the following piece of self-contradictory advice: Never take advice. Another prominent humorist offered a similar piece of oxymoronic guidance: Never give advice. Would you please help me to find these citations together with the correct phrasings?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1894 critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw sent a letter of instruction to the neophyte critic Reginald Golding Bright. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Write a thousand words a day for the next five years for at least nine months every year. Read all the great critics—Ruskin, Richard Wagner, Lessing, Lamb and Hazlitt. Get a ticket for the British Museum reading room, and live there as much as you can. Go to all the first rate orchestral concerts and to the opera, as well as to the theatres.

Shaw provided a long series of additional recommendations, but he finished by comically flipping the entire discourse:

Finally, since I have given you all this advice, I add this crowning precept, the most valuable of all. NEVER TAKE ANYBODY’S ADVICE.

Below are additional selected citations.

Dialogue Origin: “Lots of People Talk To Animals” “Not Very Many Listen, Though”

A. A. Milne? Piglet? Owl? Pooh? Benjamin Hoff? George Bernard Shaw? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The following dialog has been ascribed to the famous English author A. A. Milne:

Pooh: Lots of people talk to animals.
Owl: Maybe, but . . . Not very many listen, though.
Pooh: That’s the problem.

I am skeptical of this attribution because I have never seen a citation. Other characters such as Piglet sometimes receive credit for lines from this dialog. Would you please explore this topic.

Reply from Quote Investigator: QI has not found this dialog in any of the four canonical books containing material about Pooh by A. A. Milne: “When We Were Very Young” (1924), “Winnie-the-Pooh” (1926), “Now We Are Six” (1927), and “The House at Pooh Corner” (1928).

In 1982 U.S. author Benjamin Hoff published “The Tao of Pooh” with the goal of illuminating the Chinese philosophy of Taoism via the characters created by A. A. Milne. Hoff’s work contained the following dialog. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

It seems fairly obvious to some of us that a lot of scholars need to go outside and sniff around—walk through the grass, talk to the animals. That sort of thing.

“Lots of people talk to animals,” said Pooh.
“Maybe, but . . .”
“Not very many listen, though,” he said.
“That’s the problem,” he added.

In other words, you might say that there is more to Knowing than just being correct.

Based on current evidence QI believes that Benjamin Hoff constructed this dialog to reflect his viewpoint. It was not crafted by A. A. Milne.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Stitching Together Sequences of Linguistic Forms . . . Without Any Reference To Meaning: A Stochastic Parrot

Emily M. Bender? Timnit Gebru? Angelina McMillan-Major? Margaret Mitchell? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Artificial intelligence (AI) researchers have used vast amounts of text to train digital neural networks which capture the intricate statistical patterns of word sequences. The resultant systems are called large language models. One of the most famous is GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3).

Language models (LMs) are able to perform a variety of tasks, e.g., answering questions, summarizing documents, generating text, and translating text. However, influential AI researchers believe these capabilities are misleading and often overestimated. Thus, these models should be considered merely “stochastic parrots”. Would you please help to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In March 2021 Emily M. Bender, Timnit Gebru, Angelina McMillan-Major, and Margaret Mitchell (who used the pseudonym Shmargaret Shmitchell) published “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big?🦜” which critically examined recent research efforts. The title included a parrot emoji. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Contrary to how it may seem when we observe its output, an LM is a system for haphazardly stitching together sequences of linguistic forms it has observed in its vast training data, according to probabilistic information about how they combine, but without any reference to meaning: a stochastic parrot.

On October 8, 2021 QI sent a tweet to authors Emily M. Bender and Timnit Gebru asking about the coinage of the memorable phrase “stochastic parrot”. Gebru gave credit to Bender,² and Bender concurred:³

Yep, that was me. As it happens, I did a search when the paper was under review and before Google made a news story out of it, to see if it had been used online before then, and wasn’t able to find any instances.

Bender is a Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: It May Be That Today’s Large Neural Networks Are Slightly Conscious

Ilya Sutskever? Blaise Agüera y Arcas? Yann LeCun? Blake Lemoine? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Apparently, a top researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) controversially suggested in early 2022 that contemporary digital neural networks employed in AI systems might be “slightly conscious”. Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Ilya Sutskever is a prominent machine learning expert. He is the co-founder and Chief Scientist of OpenAI which is one of the leading companies performing AI research. In February 2022 he tweeted the following. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

it may be that today’s large neural networks are slightly conscious

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Don’t Cut Off Flower Heads and Stick Them in Pots

George Bernard Shaw? Blanche Patch? Archibald Henderson? Bennett Cerf? Walter Winchell? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: A visitor to the home of a famous wit expected to find vases filled with beautiful cut flowers, but there were none. The wit explained the absence by making a comically grotesque comparison between cut flowers and decapitated people. Would you please help me to identify the humorist and find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match known to QI appeared in 1899 within the London journal “The Garden” which published a short item crediting Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw with the joke. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Mr. G. Bernard Shaw on flowers is—well, he is Mr. G. Bernard Shaw, just as he is on the drama and things generally. As thus: “A well-balanced mind has no favourites. People who have a favourite flower generally cut off its head and stick it into a button-hole or a vase. I wonder they do not do the same to their favourite children. It is a crime to pluck a flower. I dislike formal gardens. At any given moment two thirds of its blossoms are dead.

The journal did not specify the source of this tale. Shaw received credit for variations of this quip in later years.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Repartee Origin: “Lady X Will Be At Home Thursday Between 4 and 6” “Mr. Bernard Shaw Likewise”

George Bernard Shaw? Walter Winchell? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: A person who was enamored with celebrities wanted George Bernard Shaw to attend a social gathering. Several attempts at interesting Shaw failed. So a formal invitation was sent. Shaw appended a short reply and sent the note back:

“Lord X will be at home on the 25th between four and six o’clock.”
“So will G. B. Shaw.”

Here is another version of the interaction:

“Lady X will be at home Tuesday between the hours of two and five in the afternoon.”
“George Bernard Shaw likewise.”

Is this episode genuine? Would you please explore this anecdote?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match located by QI appeared in the syndicated gossip column of Walter Winchell in September 1939. Winchell stated that the tale had been circulating in British magazines. A wealthy woman who enjoyed gathering celebrities at her home had been unable to attract Shaw. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Despite her failure, she persisted, and one day sent Shaw a card inviting him to tea. It read: “Lady X will be at home Thursday between 4 and 6” . . . Shaw sent it back with the comment: “Mr. Bernard Shaw likewise.”

QI has not yet located an earlier instance of this tale in a British periodical. Shaw was alive when this anecdote was published. He died in 1950 when he was 94 years old. This evidence is substantive, but the information was obtained neither from Shaw nor a direct participant; hence, its credibility is reduced.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: My Favorite Weapon Is a Twenty Dollar Bill

Raymond Chandler? Philip Marlowe? Dorothy Gardiner? Kathrine Sorley Walker? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: A famous author of noir detective fiction was irritated that interviewers often thought that his veridical life should be similar to the life of his hardboiled fictional private eye. Apparently, some journalists wanted to know whether the author carried a Luger, a Colt, or a Smith & Wesson revolver. The author stated comically:

My favorite weapon is a twenty dollar bill.

Would you please help me to identify this author and find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Raymond Chandler created the archetypal detective character Philip Marlowe who appeared in the novels “The Big Sleep”, “Farewell, My Lovely”, and “The Long Goodbye”. These novels were made into popular movies with Humphrey Bogart providing a memorable characterization of Marlowe in the first film.

In 1951 “Picture Post” magazine of London sent a set of interview questions to Chandler via his Hollywood agent Edgar Carter. Chandler sent a letter to Carter disparaging the magazine and its questions. Chandler included a satirical self-portrait. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Yes, I am exactly like the characters in my books. I am very tough and have been known to break a Vienna roll with my bare hands . . .

I get my material in various ways, but my favorite procedure (sometimes known as the Jerry Wald system) consists of going through the desks of other writers after hours. I am thirty-eight years old and have been for the last twenty years. I do not regard myself as a dead shot, but I am a pretty dangerous man with a wet towel. But all in all I think my favorite weapon is a twenty dollar bill. In my spare time I collect elephants.

The remark about Wald was an inside joke. He was the head of Warner Brothers Studio in Hollywood.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Making Love As Though We’re an Endangered Species

Peter De Vries? Laurence J. Peter? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Do you know who is responsible for crafting the following vivid and humorous simile?:

They made love as though they were an endangered species.

Is this the correct phrasing? I do not know whether such lovemaking would be celebratory, frenetic, fatalistic, or hopeless.

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match located by QI appeared in 1973 within the novel “Forever Panting” by Peter De Vries. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

That night Dolly and I made love as though we were an endangered species, and, oh, how gratefully one sinks into that sweet membraneous vortex of which the descent into sleep then seems the soft continuance, till the bliss and the peace together are one funneling whirlpool . . .

Peter De Vries used this simile again later in the book:²

I come to you, a landlady with eleven children all of whom have left you to become ecologists. Thanks to the likes of them we may yet attain zero population growth. All right. You take me in, clasp me to your evacuated bosom, and, making love as though we’re an endangered species—”

Below are two additional selected citations.