Quote Investigator® – Page 57

Quote Origin: The Greatest Discovery of My Generation Is That Human Beings Can Alter Their Lives By Altering Their Attitudes of Mind

William James? Harry Granison Hill? Joseph Fort Newton? Norman Vincent Peale? E. Stanley Jones? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: One’s attitude toward life has an enormous effect on one’s experiences in life. Here are two statements on this theme:

(1) The greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

(2) The greatest revolution in my generation was the discovery that human beings by changing their inner attitudes of mind can alter the outer aspects of their lives.

Both of these remarks have been attributed to the prominent U.S. philosopher and psychologist William James, but I have been unable to find any solid citations. Would you please explore this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: QI has found no substantive evidence that William James wrote or said either of these sentences. QI conjectures that the statements evolved over time from ideas espoused in the New Thought movement and the Positive Thinking philosophy. James died in 1910, and the words were attributed to him many years after his death.

William James did contend that the beliefs of an individual were a crucial determinant of well-being. For example, in May 1895 he delivered a speech on the theme “Is Life Worth Living?” which he published in the “International Journal of Ethics” in October 1895. Boldface added to excepts by QI:¹

These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

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

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: The Possible’s Slow Fuse Is Lit By the Imagination!

Emily Dickinson? Susan Gilbert Dickinson? Martha Dickinson Bianchi? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The ability to envision something novel and appealing is vital to the formulation and accomplishment of worthwhile goals. A robust imagination initiates the process.

The poet Emily Dickinson employed the apt metaphor of lighting a fuse to express this notion. Would you please help to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Emily Dickinson lived between 1830 and 1886. She was a prolific correspondent, and she sent hundreds of letters to her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson who was a beloved friend and supporter.

Martha Dickinson Bianchi was Susan’s daughter and Emily’s niece. In 1914 she published “The Single Hound: Poems of a Lifetime”, a posthumous collection of works by Emily Dickinson based on manuscripts held by Martha’s family. Each poem was assigned a number, and the quotation appeared in the four-line item numbered XXVII. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

The gleam of an heroic act,
Such strange illumination —
The Possible’s slow fuse is lit
By the Imagination!

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Do Not Take Life Quite So Seriously—You Surely Will Never Get Out of It Alive

Elbert Hubbard? Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle? William J. Crawford? Walt Kelly? Pogo? Pierre Daninos? Alphonse Allais? Julien Green?

Question for Quote Investigator: There is a trenchant family of fatalistic sayings concerning the solemnity of life. Here are four examples:

Don’t take life too seriously; you’ll never get out of it alive.
You mustn’t take life too seriously; no one makes it out alive.
Don’t take life so seriously, you’ll never get out alive.
Why take life so seriously? It’s not permanent.

This notion has been attributed to U.S. aphorist Elbert Hubbard and French essayist and scholar Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle. Would you please explore the provenance of this set of expressions?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest match located by QI appeared in the December 1900 issue of “The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest” within an essay by Elbert Hubbard who was the editor of the publication. The text began with a reference to the spiritual dimension of life. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Dear Playmate in the Kindergarten of God: Please do not take life quite so seriously—you surely will never get out of it alive. And as for your buying and selling, your churches and banks, your newspapers and books, they are really at the last of no more importance than the child’s paper houses, red and blue wafers, and funny scissors things.

Why you grown-ups! all your possessions are only just to keep you out of mischief, until Death, the good old nurse, comes and rocks you to sleep. Am I not right?

Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle died in 1757, and he received credit for this saying by the 1970s which is rather late. QI has not yet found substantive support for this attribution.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: A Man Convinced Against His Will, Is of the Same Opinion Still

Samuel Butler? John Pope? T.B.? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: There is a family of sayings about the difficulty of compelling obedience. Here are three instances:

A man convinced against his will,
Is of the same opinion still.

Those convinced against their will,
Are of the same opinion still.

He that complies against his will,
Is of his own opinion still.

The meanings of the two words “convinced” and “complies” are dissimilar; hence, the implications of these sayings are distinct. Would you please explore this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The first member of this family to enter circulation employed the word “complies”. The saying appeared in the long mock-heroic work “Hudibras” by the seventeenth-century English poet Samuel Butler. The three parts of this work were combined into a single edition published in 1684. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

He that complies against his Will,
Is of his own Opinion still;
Which he may adhere to, yet disown,
For Reasons to himself best known

A separate article about the above saying is available here.

This article will concentrate on the variants of this couplet containing the word “convinced”. For example, in 1786 “The Belfast Mercury” of Belfast, Northern Ireland published a letter from T. B. to the editor containing the following instance:²

… the saying of the satirical poet,
“A man convinced against his will,
Is of the same opinion still.”

QI believes that the letter writer was misremembering the couplet from Samuel Butler’s “Hudibras”.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: He That Complies Against His Will, Is of His Own Opinion Still

Samuel Butler? Frances Burney? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Force can be used to compel a person to exhibit a specific behavior, but it is much more difficult to change the mind of a person. Compliance does not denote mental submission.
The 17th-century poet Samuel Butler composed a couplet expressing this notion. Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: Samuel Butler lived between 1613 and 1680. His most famous work was a long satirical poem titled “Hudibras”. The three parts of the poem were combined into a single edition published in 1684. The quotation appeared in third part within canto three. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

He that complies against his Will,
Is of his own Opinion still;
Which he may adhere to, yet disown,
For Reasons to himself best known

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Government Can Easily Exist Without Law, But Law Cannot Exist Without Government

Bertrand Russell? Leo Rosten? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The relationship between government and law can be deftly summarized with two contrasting statements:

Government can exist without law(s).
Law(s) cannot exist without government.

These dual notions have been attributed to the famous British mathematician and social critic Bertrand Russell. Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1950 Bertrand Russell published a collection titled “Unpopular Essays”. The quotation appeared in the essay “Ideas That Have Helped Mankind”. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Government can easily exist without law, but law cannot exist without government—a fact which was forgotten by those who framed the League of Nations and the Kellogg Pact. Government may be defined as a concentration of the collective forces of a community in a certain organization which, in virtue of this concentration, is able to control individual citizens and to resist pressure from foreign states.

The elegance of the statement stems from the repetition of the key words “government” and “law” in transposed order. Variant statements attributed to Russell have entered circulation over time. The word “law” is sometimes replaced by “laws”. This replacement occurs for either one or both instances of “law”.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Definition Origin: A Milli-Helen Is the Quantity of Beauty Required To Launch Exactly One Ship

Isaac Asimov? W. A. H. Rushton? R. C. Winton? Edgar J. Westbury? Christopher Marlowe? Anonymous?

Question for Quote Investigator: Standards of beauty are notoriously subjective and variable. Different qualities are prized over time, and distinct cultures value divergent attributes.

In the domain of Greek mythology, Helen of Troy was the most beautiful woman in the world. English playwright Christopher Marlowe’s tragedy “Doctor Faustus” contains the following lines about her:

Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships,
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium

An aspiring humorist proposed the “Helen” as a measure of female pulchritude. Thus, the “milli-Helen” (one thousandth of a “Helen”) was the amount of beauty sufficient to launch one ship. The hyphen is sometimes omitted. This quip has been attributed to science fiction author Isaac Asimov and physiologist W. A. H. Rushton. Would you please examine this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest published evidence known to QI appeared in the London humor magazine “Punch” in 1954. The quip was attributed to an unnamed “professor of natural philosophy”. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Scientists and aesthetes alike have heard with interest that the “unit of absolute beauty” has been invented by a professor of natural philosophy, who calls it a Helen and explains that it is divisible into millihelens. It is hoped that the millihelen may in time be interpreted in terms of power, when it should prove handy for launching a single ship.

In 1992 science fiction luminary Isaac Asimov made the interesting claim that he invented the term “millihelen” during a discussion with a friend in the early 1940s. See the 1992 citation given further below. QI has not yet located substantive support for this claim.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: No Plan Survives First Contact With the Enemy

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder? Carl von Clausewitz? Dwight D. Eisenhower? Mike Tyson? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Anybody who is attempting to accomplish a major project must be flexible. Planning is important, but adaptability is essential. Here are two versions of a pertinent adage from the domain of warfare and competition:

No plan survives contact with the enemy.
No plan survives first contact with the enemy.

This saying has been attributed to Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder and Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz. Would you please explore this topic?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In 1871 Helmuth von Moltke wrote an essay about military strategy that included a lengthy statement that was essentially equivalent to the concise adage. Here is an excerpt in German followed by an English translation. Boldface added to by QI:¹

Kein Operationsplan reicht mit einiger Sicherheit über das erste Zusammentreffen mit der feindlichen Hauptmacht hinaus. Nur der Laie glaubt in dem Verlauf eines Feldzuges die konsequente Durchführung eines im voraus gefaßten in allen Einzelheiten überlegten und bis ans Ende festgehaltenen, ursprünglichen Gedankens zu erblicken.

No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces. Only the layman believes that in the course of a campaign he sees the consistent implementation of an original thought that has been considered in advance in every detail and retained to the end.

Over time Moltke’s statement was condensed to yield the currently popular adages.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: The Things of Nature Do Not Really Belong To Us. We Should Leave Them To Our Children As We Have Received Them

Oscar Wilde? Lloyd Lewis? Henry Justin Smith? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: The famous wit Oscar Wilde apparently expressed some forward thinking ideas about the environment. He believed that the natural world should be preserved so that it can be conveyed to our children in the condition it was received. Would you please help me to find a citation.

Reply from Quote Investigator: Oscar Wilde visited Canada in 1882 and delivered a lecture in Ottawa on May 16 about “Art Decoration”. The following day the “Ottawa Citizen” reported on his clothes, his demeanor, and his speech. Wilde had noticed that the Ottawa river was filled with sawdust and the air was filled with smoke, so he diverged from his main topic to discuss pollution. The newspaper responded to Wilde as follows. Boldface added to excepts by QI:¹

That it is a pity that the Ottawa should be dirtied with saw dust has been long admitted, and that pure sky should be dirtied with smoke may also be a pity, but Mr. Wilde goes too far when he advocates that no man should be allowed to carry on a business which produces either of these results.

The following week Wilde delivered a lecture in Kingston, Canada, and the local newspaper reported that he objected to pollution because it damaged the common inheritance of humankind:²

He had recently been in Ottawa, and had seen a noble river choked with sawdust. This he considered an outrage, as no one had a right to pollute the air or the water, which are the common inheritance of all.

During an interview with a Kingston journalist, Wilde suggested that industrialists should be forced to perform some form of recycling:³

The public, he thought, should compel manufacturers to consume their own smoke, make use of their sawdust, and discharge their effluvia somewhere else than into beautiful rivers or life giving atmosphere. Ruskin had induced Manchester to stop similar pollution.

The citations above appeared contemporaneously with Wilde’s North American sojourn. The earliest match known to QI depicting natural resources as an inheritance for children appeared in the 1936 book “Oscar Wilde Discovers America” by Lloyd Lewis and Henry Justin Smith. The quotation below appeared in a section about Wilde’s 1882 visit to Canada:⁴

At Ottawa, where he spoke next, Wilde realized how completely Canada had followed America into industrialism and business . . . And in that very April he had read complaints of the American Forestry Congress, which was organizing in Cincinnati against the rapid waste of forests.

As a Socialist, the poet opposed such exploitation of natural resources. “The things of nature do not really belong to us,” he said; “we should leave them to our children as we have received them.”

How this philosophy, if put into action, would have delayed the settlement of the West, was a question he did not face.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

Quote Origin: Co-Authoring a Book Is Like Three People Getting Together To Have a Baby

Evelyn Waugh? Agatha Christie? Hilary St. George Saunders? Leonard Lyons? Apocryphal?

Question for Quote Investigator: Collaborating on a complex project like writing a novel is impossible for many people. English writer Evelyn Waugh said something like the following:

Coauthoring a book is like three people getting together to have a baby.

Would you please help me to find a citation?

Reply from Quote Investigator: In April 1943 the prominent gossip columnist Leonard Lyons wrote about British novelist Evelyn Waugh and British historian Hilary St. George Saunders. Waugh was surprised to learn that Saunders was able to work together with another writer to successfully coauthor a book. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:¹

Of Saunders’ other writings, Waugh said: “But he collaborates. I never can understand how two men can write a book together. To me, that’s like three people getting together to have a baby.”

In the age of surrogate mothers and in vitro fertilization the notion of three (or more) people collaborating to produce a child is no longer outlandish.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.