This page is a new incarnation of my popular GeoCities page, now gone (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/5952/unquote.html, http://geocities.com/unmark/unquote.html, http://www.geocities.com/unmark/mquotes.html, etc.) There are still many broken "Athens/5952" links out there - I'm not sure what to do about it!
Unquote 1
My version of gardening is to maintain a web page of quotations. I had fun trying to ascertain who actually said what I quoted in the June '00 Penn Central newsletter as:
If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain. - Winston Churchill
I failed to find the quote under "socialist", "conservative", "heart", "man", or "Churchill", in books of quotations like Bartlett's, Encarta's, Oxford Dictionary of, Home Book of, or NY Public Library's.
http://retro.co.za/quotes/eli.html says: Any man who is not... a socialist before he is 40 has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist after he is 40 has no head. - Wendell L. Willkie (quoted by Richard Norton Smith)
http://www.sirius.com/~maya/poetry/republico.html says: As George Bernard Shaw said, one who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, and one who remains a socialist at 40 has no head.
http://home.planetinternet.be/~smitsr/quotes/b.html says: The man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, but if he is still a socialist at 40 he has no head. - Aristide Briand (1862 - 1932) [French premier and former socialist]
http://bserver.com/bunker/party.html says: I think it was William Casey [director of the CIA] who said, A man who isn't a socialist at 20 has no heart, and a man who is a socialist at 40 has no head.
http://abedul.pntic.mec.es/colaborativos/quotes/list.html says: Anyone who is not a socialist at 16 has no heart, but anyone who still is at 32 has no mind. - Woodrow Wilson
http://jerryk.com/dialogue/dialogue960915.htm says: He who is not a Socialist at 19, has no heart. He who is still a Socialist at 30, has no brain. - Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1896)
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/1998/12/68/edits/seaton.html says: Georges Clemenceau [another French Premier and former socialist] once said something like: A 20-year-old who is not a Socialist has no heart, but a 30-year-old who is still a Socialist has no brains. http://www.bkkpost.samart.co.th/news/BParchive/BP970911/1109_busi22.html says: Not to be a Republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. - François Guisot (1787-1874) and: A man who is not a liberal at 16 has no heart; a man who is not a conservative at 60 has no head. - Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) and: Not to be a socialist at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. - Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929) and: Any man who is under 30 and is not a Liberal has no heart; and any man who is over 30 and not a Conservative has no brains. - Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
A definitive answer arose in the wonderful book "Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations" by Ralph Keyes, 1992. He writes:
"An orphan quote [unattributed quote in search of a home] sometimes attributed to Georges Clemenceau is: Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head. The most likely reason is that Bennet Cerf once reported Clemenceau's response to a visitor's alarm about his son being a communist: If he had not become a Communist at 22, I would have disowned him. If he is still a Communist at 30, I will do it then. George Seldes later quoted Lloyd George as having said: A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head. The earliest known version of this observation is attributed to mid-nineteenth century historian and statesman François Guizot: Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head. Variations on this theme were later attributed to Disraeli, Shaw, Churchill, and Bertrand Russell. (I misquoted Churchill to this effect for years.)"
Unquote 2
http://www.izzy.com/~patri/quotes/philosophy.html says: Intelligent people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people.
Some quoters attribute it to Dear Abby, like:
http://www.donnaonat.com/quote5.htm
Many say it was a "Sign in a barber shop."
http://www.bram.net/humor-archive/1997-Oct/msg00070.html varies it: Sign in a barber shop: Intelligent people talk about ideas, ordinary people talk about things, and all people talk about other people.
A correspondent found this possible first-usage in
_Quote It! Memorable Legal Quotations_ (NY: Clark Boardman Co., 1969), p. 443: "Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." Vice Adm. H.G. Rickover, "The World of the Uneducated," The Saturday Evening Post, Nov. 28, 1959, p. 59.
Another e-acquaintance offered:
Small minds discuss people; normal minds discuss ideas; large minds make them happen.
Unquote 3
Re: the search for an attribution for the very familiar:
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
1) It's not in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.
2) It was the Peace Corps' motto.
http://www.cyberquotations.com/sorted/qHelpfulness.htm says: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. - Lao-Tzu http://www.super-memory.com/sml/colls/engprov.htm says: If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, If you teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime - Confucius
These two sound sort of definitive:
http://www.quoteland.com/qldb/author/243?qlSess=dac7f75ce4a85ed7608cfafeeab6ac7f and http://www.quotegallery.com/asp/quotesalpha.asp?letter=G&curpage=2 both say: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. - Chinese Proverb And http://www.chemistrycoach.com/fish_fishing_and_education.htm adds: "Chinese proverb. The International Thesaurus of Quotations, ed. Rhoda Thomas Tripp, p. 76, no. 3 (1970)." http://www.amatecon.com/fish.html has some improvements, like the oddly relevant: Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
Unquote 4
There are many ways to say "If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." and there are many ways to attribute it. For example:
http://www.petermeierinc.com/Wisdoms-private.asp If I had known that I was going to live that long, I would have taken better care of myself! - Mark Twain http://www.jedblock.com/Wish%20I'd%20have%20said%20it.html If I'd known I'd live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. - Mark Twain http://www.learninginnovations.net/quotes.html If I knew I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. - Mickey Mantle http://www.antion.com/ezine/v1n21.txt If I would have known how old I was going to be, I would have taken better care of myself. - Adolf Zukor at age 99 http://www.heartquotes.net/age.html If I'd known how old I was going to be I'd have taken better care of myself. - Adolph Zukor, on approaching his hundredth birthday http://www.puzzlegrid.com/quotes.cgi?subgroups=Health&startvalue=0 If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. - Eubie Blake http://littlecalamity.tripod.com/Quotes/Aging.html If I'd known I was going to live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. - Eubie [James Herbert] Blake, 1983 http://seniors.tcnet.org/quotes_age.htm "If I knew I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself." - Eubie Blake; later used by Mickey Mantle http://www.idiotsguides.com/Chapters/0028633857_CIG_20thCent_Hist/file.htm If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself." - Eubie Blake (1883-1983), ragtime composer and pianist, on his 100th birthday, five days before his death http://www.phfa.org/edr/edr01-9.txt If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. - Hubie Blake, at age 92 http://johnjones.com/library/quotes.html If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself. - James Blake, 1883-1983 http://www.bg-info.com/humor_-_quotes.html If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself. - Jimmy Durante http://www.quotegarden.com/health.html If I'd known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of myself. - Leon Eldred http://www.atlantic.net/~matthw/quotes.htm If I knew I was going to live so long I would have taken better care of myself. - George Burns http://www.joesweeney.com/articles.htm If I had known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself. - Sammy Davis, Jr. http://www.bookpage.com/0201bp/george_vaillant.html If I'd known I'd live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself. - Mickey Mantle often repeated the line attributed to the 100 year-old Hubie Blake
Unquote 5
I was reading a slide presentation on Leadership by a former Marine Corps Colonel who worked at my company and I ran across the phrase "massive common sense". A web search yielded:
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/etexts/n229_9.htm Though our conversation was short, he [a fictional character] struck me as a man of very massive common sense and humour... - G.K. Chesterton, The Man Who Was Thursday, a novel, England, 1908
http://www.clausewitz.com/CWZHOME/Warfit1.htm There is required for the composition of a great commander not only massive common sense and reasoning power, not only imagination, but also an element of legerdemain, an original and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten. - Winston S. Churchill, The World Crisis, 1923
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/fh108lang.htm Churchill exercised one of his most important functions as war leader by holding their calculations and assertions up to the standards of a massive common sense, informed by wide reading and experience at war. - Professor Eliot Cohen, "The Problems of Supreme Command", Churchill Proceedings 1992-1993
www.acu.edu.au/library/mcauley/1993.pdf The great philosopher cannot indeed have too daring an imagination provided only that its exercise is controlled by a profound sobriety of judgment, a massive common sense... - A.E Taylor, Aquinas Sexcentenary Lecture, 1925 What one looks for from a great teacher is learning and vision, but at the same time this quality of a 'sense for reality', 'a massive common sense'. - Joseph Munitiz S.J., Catechisms in the Making [Lecture], 1993
http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1282/13_54/87869082/p1/article.jhtml Cohen writes that Churchill's success depended "less on professional expertise than on wide reading and massive common sense." If Bush's common sense isn't necessarily "massive," he certainly has plenty of it. And if his reading hasn't been all that wide, he could do worse than picking up this fine book, which almost reads like an instruction manual to handling the tasks ahead. - Richard Lowry, National Review, 15 Jul 2002, in a review of "Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime", by Eliot A. Cohen (Free Press)
I'm not sure what to conclude. It's such an odd phrase and yet so ubiquitous. Perhaps Churchill read Chesterton and everyone read Churchill.
Unquote 6
Steven Covey's 7th habit of highly effective people is to "Sharpen the saw". I thought I had found a good quote about "preparation" by local football coach Joe Paterno, but then...
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/joepaterno125242.html says: The will to win is important, but the will to prepare is vital. - Joe Paterno http://www.prin.edu/collegeathletics/uploads/474/Football_Summer_Workouts_2006.pdf says: Everyone has the will to win. Few have the desire to prepare to win. - Joe Paterno Everyone wants to win, but few have the will to prepare. - My improvement on the above
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/everyone-wants-to-be-on-a-winning-team-but-no-one/559748.html says: Everyone wants to be on a winning team, but no one wants to come to practice. - Bobby Knight
http://www.motivational-inspirational-corner.com/getquote.html?startrow=21&categoryid=67 says: It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference. - Bear Bryant
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bobby_knight.html has three variations, the third being my favorite: Most people have the will to win, few have the will to prepare to win. - Bobby Knight The key is not the will to win... everybody has that. It is the will to prepare to win that is important. - Bobby Knight The will to succeed is important, but what's more important is the will to prepare. - Bobby Knight
And while we're on the subject...
http://www.motivational-inspirational-corner.com/getquote.html?categoryid=67 also says: To be prepared is half the victory. - Miguel De Cervantes Success depends upon previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure. - Confucius If I had six hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend the first hour sharpening the ax. - Abraham Lincoln
Unquote 7
The road to Hell is paved with good intentions. - attributed to Karl Marx
"Hell is paved with good intentions." - Attributed to Samuel Johnson (sans "The road to") in Boswell's Life of Johnson, entry April 16, 1775 Boswell's editor, Malone, added a footnote indicating this is a 'proverbial sentence,' quoting an earlier 1651 source "Hell is paved with good intentions." - John Ray, in 1670, cited as a proverb, per Robert Wilson, in the newsgroup alt.quotations "Hell is full of good intentions or desires." - Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153) per Robert Wilson, in the newsgroup alt.quotations
The road to nowhere's paved with plans that never quite got done. - Mark T. Shirey
Unquote 8
http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/1553 says: Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. - Steve Martin
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=461815 says: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=110357 says: Talking about love is like dancing about architecture. http://dancingaboutarchitecture365.blogspot.com/ says: Writing about music is like dancing about architecture... it's a really stupid thing to want to do. - Elvis Costello
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=528421 says: Describing feelings with words is like playing the piano with a baseball-bat. Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read. - Frank Zappa in the Chicago Tribune, 1978 http://blog.mindjet.com/2005/04/writing-about-art-is-like-dancing-about-architecture says: I love the quote "Writing about Art is like Dancing about Architecture" - not sure who to attribute it to though - Google suggests too many different options.
http://www.dancingaboutarc.com/misc/abouthome.html says: Just for the record, it was Elvis Costello who said it. Or maybe it was Frank Zappa. "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." It was something like that. Or not.
This nice site, with even more attributions, says "the mystery continues":
http://www.pacifier.com/~ascott/they/tamildaa.htm
Unquote 9
"No man on his deathbed ever said, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'"
http://www.commencement.harvard.edu/2002/franken.html says that Al Franken said:
Here's a line from late Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas that is often quoted at commencements. "No man on his deathbed ever said, 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'" How does he know that? I'll bet someone on their deathbed said, "I wish I had spent more time at the office in my twenties and thirties, I would have had a much better life." gurgle--dead. I'm sure that happens. And it's quite possible that some former Enron or Arthur Anderson executive will use his last breath to say, "I wish I had spent more time at the office and less time in prison."
In http://www.irishcalvinist.com/?p=1590 someone says:
I am reminded of the famed theologian Lee Iacocca who wrote, "No one ever said on their death bed 'I wish I had spent more time at the office.'"
In http://www.griefnet.org/usamemorial/motivation.html Anna Quindlen says:
Don't ever forget what a friend once wrote Senator Paul Tsongas when the senator decided not to run for reelection because he'd been diagnosed with cancer: No man ever said on his deathbed I wish I had spent more time in the office.