“The rich are different” – and so are politicians and the French

FAMOUS QUOTE AND COUNTERQUOTE: F. Scott Fitzgerald: “The rich are different from you and me.” Ernest Hemingway: “Yes, they have more money.”        Their legendary quote-counterquote exchange

UPDATED COUNTERQUOTE: “The rich are different from you and me: they cheat more on their taxes.”        Lynn Brenner        American financial writer        Newsday, April 2, 1995

POLITICIANS VERSION: “Politicians are different from you and me. The business of reaching for power does something to a man…he instinctively calculates each new situation and each new situation and each other man with the simplest question: What can this do for me.”        Richard Reeves        American presidential historian          in his book A Ford, not a Lincoln (1975)

NAKED TRUTH VARIATION “The French are different from you and me, assuming, of course, that you're not French, in which case the French are different from me, and the Americans are different from you.”        Leslie Nielsen        Canadian actor and comic genius        In his book The Naked Truth (1994)

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