“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

THE OLD SIXTIES SLOGAN: “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”        Charles Dederich (1914-1997)        Founder of Synanon, the 1960s drug rehabilitation organization that morphed into a cult         Most sources credit Charles Dederich with coining this well-known self-help mantra in the 1960s, around the time he founded Synanon. Clearly, it’s use by Dederich and Synanon as a slogan for recovering drug addicts helped popularize the saying. However, Dederich may or may not have created it. It’s one of those sayings that just seem to have been floating around in the 1960s. Many websites and books say it was coined by the legendary Hippie activist/theater group called The Diggers. It was also used by Yippie leader Abbie Hoffman in his 1968 book Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), as the title of a song in the obscure 1968 musical Love Match, and on on everything from head shop posters and greeting cards. I suspect that’s why some sources simply (and perhaps rightly) credit it to “Anonymous.” (Related post: “One day at a time”)

STEVE MARTIN’S COUNTERTWEET: “I thought yesterday was the first day of the rest of my life but it turns out today is.”        Steve Martin        American actor, comedian, musician and writer        A tweet from his Twitter feed

THE “OLD” OPTIMIST’S VARIATION: “Do something outrageous, bold, unlike yourself. If the bathing suit doesn’t fit, skinny-dip. The clock ticketh. To adapt an old philosophy: Today is the youngest day of the rest of your life.”        Susan Swartz        California-based journalist, author and public radio commentator        Advice in her book Juicy Tomatoes: Plain Truths, Dumb Lies, and Sisterly Advice about Life After 50 (2000)

THE AGELESS PESSIMIST’S VARIATION: “Today today is the first day of the rest of your life...and it too will suck.”         T-shirt slogan (on Zazzle.com)

THE WALKING WOUNDED VERSION: “Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life’? Well, that’s true of every day but one — the day you die.”        Kevin Spacey, as the character Lester Burnham        A poignant quote from the 1999 film American Beauty, spoken as a voiceover by Lester not long before he commits suicide.

THE WALKING DEAD VERSION: “To our newest undead recruits. Good moaning. Today is the first day of the rest of your afterlife.”        Virginia Reynolds (a.k.a. “MsCadavreExquis”)        American author alleged to be the “love child of Marcel Duchamp and Victoria Woodhull”        From the "Deadication" of her book The Art of War for Zombies: Ancient Chinese Secrets of World Domination (2011)

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Comments? Corrections? Post them on the Famous Quotations Facebook page.

Related reading and viewing…

“Life is unfair…”

JFK’S FAMED OBSERVATION: “Life is unfair.”        President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)        American Democratic politician who served as the 35th President of the United States               This famous pithy quote comes from comments Kennedy made in a press conference on March 21, 1962. It’s one of JFK’s most widely-cited quotations, though few people today are aware of the context. It was part of his response to a question about U.S. Army reservists who had publicly objected to being called up to serve as “military advisors” in Vietnam. Kennedy had recently increased the American military presence in Vietnam to nearly 10,000 troops. Some reservists had expressed their opposition by holding public demonstrations.        When asked about those protests, Kennedy responded: “Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded, and some men never leave the country, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It’s very hard in military or in personal life to assure complete equality. Life is unfair.”        For more background see the entry about this quote on my ThisDayinQuotes.com site and Garson O’Toole’s post about it on his great QuoteInvestigator.com site.

SCALZI’S CLARIFICATION: “There’s a difference between the fact that the universe is inherently unfair on a cosmic level, and the fact that life is unfair because people are actively making it so.”        John Scalzi        American science fiction author         A comment Scalzi made in a post on his blog about homophobia. As he notes in the next sentence in that post: “There’s not much one can do about the former, but the latter is fixable.”

MARABOLI’S MAXIM: “The only thing that makes life unfair is the delusion that it should be fair.”        Steve Maraboli        American behavioral scientist, motivational speaker and author         From his book Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

USTINOV’S UNCONFIRMED QUIP: “Life is unfair but remember sometimes it is unfair in your favor.”        Attributed to Peter Ustinov (1921-2004)        British actor and writer         This quip is attributed to Ustinov by hundreds of posts on the Internet, but none that I found gave any source. If you can confirm that it’s a real quote by Ustinov and know the source, please shoot me an email and let me know.

LOWE’S COUNTERQUOTE: “Nothing in life is unfair. It’s just life.”        Rob Lowe        American actor        In his autobiography Stories I Only Tell My Friends

A THOUGHT ABOUT MARILYN: “At her death the world looked for villains. It found only the troubling truths that life is unfair and cruel, that we see human despair too late, that courage is not always enough.”         From the narration for the classic 1966 documentary film The Legend of Marilyn Monroe, produced shortly after Marilyn’s death.        Script by Theodore Strauss and Terry Sanders (who also directed the film). Actor John Huston is the narrator.

*     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Comments? Questions? Corrections? Post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook group.

Related reading and viewing: