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“I never promised you a rose garden.”

THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMOUS LINE: “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden”         Hannah Green (pen name of Joanne Greenberg; 1927–1996)        American author        Title of her 1964 novel                      This novel is the apparent source of the saying, though it was made even more famous by country music singer Lynn Anderson’s 1970 hit song of the same name. The well-known opening lyrics of the song, written by singer/songwriter Joe South, are: “I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.”         Greenberg’s novel is a semi-autobiographical account of her struggle with schizophrenia as a teenager. In an emotional scene in the book, psychotherapist Dr. Clara Fried tells the main character, Deborah Blau: “I never promised you a rose garden. I never promised you perfect justice and I never promised you peace or happiness. My help is that so you can be free to fight for all of these things. The only reality I offer is challenge, and being well is being free to accept it or not at whatever level you are capable. I never promise lies, and the rose-garden world of perfection is a lie...and a bore too!” Dr. Fried is based on Greenberg's real psychiatrist, Dr. Frieda Fromm-Reichmann, who treated her at the Chestnut Lodge hospital in Rockville, Maryland.        The novel was adapted into a movie in 1977. It starred Kathleen Quinlan as Deborah and Bibi Andersson as Dr. Fried. Mel Gibson made his screen debut in the film, in a small uncredited role as a baseball player. Many years later, Mel uttered his own scary quote about a garden. (See below.)

THE BADASS MARINE SLOGAN: “We don’t promise you a rose garden.”         U.S. Marines recruiting slogan used from late 1971 until mid-1984         The “Rose Garden” slogan was used in the first series of posters and ads that featured the tagline “The Marines are looking for a few good men.” Several posters in series showed Marine Drill Instructors yelling at new recruits, like the one shown here. The drill instructor in it is Sgt. Charles A. Taliano, who passed away in 2010.

THE BADASS JUDGE VERSION: “Nobody promised them [prison inmates] a rose garden…They have been convicted of crime, and there is nothing in the Constitution which forbids their being penalized as a result of that conviction.”        William Rehnquist (1924-2005)        Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court         From his written decision on the 1981 U.S. Supreme Court case Atiyeh v. Capps, explaining why the court rejected a lawsuit brought by a group of Oregon prison inmates against the State of Oregon. The inmates wanted Oregon prisons to be forced to reduce prison overcrowding conditions they contended were inhumane and illegal.

THE PASSION OF MEL VERSION: “Apparently Mel Gibson did promise his babymama Oksana Grigorieva a rose garden…But totally not in a good way. In the latest round of the seemingly endless parade of embarrassing tape leaks purporting to capture the Passion of the Christ helmsman in full meltdown mode, a new snippet of conversation has emerged, in which Gibson reportedly threatens to bury Grigorieva in the flower bed of his Malibu, California, mansion.”        From a now-deleted post on the PEACE FM Online site, July 9, 2010

THE PRESIDENTIAL VERSION: “I never promised you a rose garden but I guess [Press Secretary] Ron Nessen did. So, I hope you enjoy this new setting and the new format, and I hope I enjoy it, too.”        President Gerald R. Ford (1913-2006)                      Comment in a news conference on October 9, 1974        Ford was joking about his newly announced plan to hold press conferences in the White House Rose Garden. When Ford and other presidents later started using this option during campaign periods to avoid the usual campaign travel grind while still generating news stories and looking presidential, it was dubbed the “Rose Garden Strategy.”

THE BIONIC VERSION: Col. Steve Austin (actor Lee Majors): “Now wait a minute, Jaime, you're not going out a torpedo tube. Now you felt the sub, it’s gonna be rough out there.”  Jaime Sommers (actress Lindsay Wagner): “You never promised me a rose garden.”                      Banter from the “Kill Oscar: Part 3” episode of the American TV series The Bionic Woman (Season 2, Episode 6, first aired in 1976).

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“The shot heard round the world.”

 

THE ORIGINAL THING HEARD ROUND THE WORLD: “The shot heard round the world.”        Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)        American poet, essayist and lecturer        This famous line is from Emerson’s poem commonly called the “Concord Hymn.” (Full title: ““Hymn: Sung at the Completion of the Concord Monument.”)It’s the last line of the first verse:               “By the rude bridge that arched the flood,                Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,                Here once the embattled farmers stood                And fired the shot heard round the world.”        Emerson wrote the poem in 1836 for a ceremony to celebrate the completion of a monument to the American “Minutemen” who fought at the Battles of Lexington and Concord in Massachusetts. These skirmishes between rebellious Americans and British troops on April 19, 1775 are generally regarded as the beginning of the Revolutionary War.        That morning, some 700 British Army regulars were marching through Lexington toward Concord to confiscate an illegal weapons arsenal stored there by the Massachusetts militia. When the “Redcoats” got to Lexington, their way was blocked by about 80 local militiamen. British Major John Pitcairn ordered the Americans to disperse, which they actually began to do. Then, suddenly, someone fired a shot. Nobody knew who it was. But, when it rang out, both sides started firing at each other and the American Revolution was underway.         At the official dedication of the Concord Monument on July 4, 1837, Emerson’s poem was sung to the tune of a hymn called “The Old Hundredth,” a.k.a. “The Old 100th” or “The Old Hundred.” (Hence the use of the word “hymn” in the title.)        His memorable phrase “the shot heard round the world” created a phrase formula that has since been used to refer to various other things that generate wide attention or notoriety. The lists things said to have been heard or seen “round the world” or “around the world” are enormous. You can see more than a million examples that use “heard” in the posts shown in the Google search at this link. You can see over a million examples using “seen” in the posts at this link. Undoubtedly, there will be many more in the future. (For more background on the Emerson quote, see the post on my This Day in Quotes blog here.)

THE SLAP SEEN AROUND THE WORLD: “What bothered me most, after The Slap Seen Around the World, was how the giants of Black Hollywood immediately circled to protect Will Smith...Will anyone famous who stood and applauded Smith after his acceptance speech be asked to explain their actions? Will the Academy or Oscarcast producers explain why they allowed someone to hit a performer — a friend sent me a text joking that Ricky Gervais is lucky he’s not still hosting the Golden Globes — and then collect an award?”                     Eric Deggans        NPR TV critic and author        Deggans named actor Will Smith’s controversial public assault on comedian Chris Rock “The Slap Seen Around the World” in a post on the NPR website the day after actor Smith’s gave an open-handed sucker punch to Chris Rock at the March 27, 2022 Academy Awards. The words Smith yelled at Rock after the slap are at least a temporarily famous quotation: “Keep my wife's name out your f***ing mouth!”

THE CELEBRITY “NEWS” VARIATION: “The divorce heard round the world.”        Perez Hilton        American celebrity news blogger and “television personality”        This was Hilton’s description of “reality star” Kim Kardashian’s 2013 divorce from NBA player Kris Humphries. The divorce came just ten weeks after their obscenely lavish, apparently made-for-TV wedding brought joy to the hearts of millions of celebrity-obsessed people—and to the pocketbooks of TV shows and tabloid magazines and websites that cover such stuff, like Hilton’s site.

THE BRAIN FART VARIATION:         “The brain fart heard round the world.”        Jon Stewart        American comedian and host of The Daily Show        Stewart’s description, in a November 2011 episode The Daily Show, of Rick Perry’s “oops moment” during the November 9, 2011 Republican presidential candidate debate, when Perry said he would abolish three federal agencies if elected but was unable to name all three. Some commentators called it “the oops moment heard round the world.”

AN OLDER POLITICAL VARIATION: “The blooper heard round the world.”        TIME magazine’s, October 18, 1976        This was the headline of a TIME article about the huge gaffe made by President Gerald Ford during the October 6, 1976 presidential debate with Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter. During a part of the debate about the Soviet Union, Ford claimed “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” In fact, the Soviet Union clearly dominated a number of countries in Eastern Europe at the time, including East Germany, Yugoslavia, Rumania and Poland. The remark made Ford seem clueless about international politics. He later admitted he’d misspoken. Carter won the election.

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Comments? Corrections? Questions? Email me or post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook page.

          

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

THE FAMOUS UNCF SLOGAN: “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”         Advertising tagline used by the United Negro College Fund since 1972         The slogan was coined in 1971 by Forest Long, an executive with the Young & Rubicam ad agency. The campaign using the slogan was launched in earnest in 1972. It has helped raise more than $2.2 billion and helped more than 350,000 minority students graduate from college.         Over the decades, it has also sparked many serious and humorous variations. Some of my faves are shown below.

THE PLUS SIDE OF THE COVID PANDEMIC: “A pandemic is a terrible thing to waste. There’s some good things that have come out of that; we can work remote two or three days a week and we can have flexible schedules. It's not 8 to 5.”                        Phil Blair        Co-owner of Manpower Staffing Services of San Diego        In an interview on in March 2022

ROMER’S OFT-RECYCLED CRISIS QUIP: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”         Paul Romer         American economist         Romer is credited with coining this saying in a 2004 venture capital meeting in California.         It was picked by and recycled in various ways by other economic and political observers. The best-known political use was by Rahm Emanuel, when he was Chief of Staff for President Barack Obama. In a soon widely-quoted interview at a Wall Street Journal CEO Council forum on November 19, 2008, Emanuel said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. What I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” Rahm was speaking about the 2008 bank crisis in particular, but said the principle should also be applied to other areas facing serious problems, such as health care, energy, and education.

THE CLASSIC MEL BROOKS MOVIE QUIP: The Sheriff of Rottingham (actor Roger Rees) “Kill him!” [Referring to a mime who tried to entertain him and Prince John at a banquet.] Prince John (actor Richard Lewis): “You know, a mime is a terrible thing to waste.” The Sheriff: “ Let him go.”         In the movie Robin Hood: Men in Tights (1993), directed by Mel Brooks and co-written by him, Evan Chandler and J. David Shapiro.

THE CLASSIC SHIRLEY MACLAINE MOVIE QUIP: Ouiser Boudreaux (actress Shirley MacLaine): “A dirty mind is a terrible thing to waste.”         In the movie Steel Magnolias (1989)

THE AVID COMPOSTER’S RULE: “Compost...Because a Rind is a Terrible Thing to Waste!”         Title of a composting manual by Jean Bonhotal and Karen Rollo, published by the Cornell Waste Management Institute (1996)

THE HAIRY UPPER LIP RULE: “A Mustache Is A Terrible Thing To Shave”         A humorous slogan used by the American Mustache Institute

STERN’S DICKISH VARIATION: “A penis is a terrible thing to waste.”         Howard Stern         American radio and TV show host         Stern used this line for a controversial fundraising effort on behalf of John Bobbit (whose penis had been cut off by his wife Lorena) as part of Stern’s New Year’s Rotten Eve Pageant in 1994. Stern was indeed supportive of John at the time, though many observers now view him as an abusive husband who pushed Lorena to her breaking point. (Portrait of Stern by the great Drew Friedman.)

THE INFAMOUS QUAYLE BLOOPER: “When you take the UNCF model that, what a waste it is to lose one’s mind, or not to have a mind is being very wasteful, how true that is.”         Dan Quayle         Republican politician who served as Vice President of the United States under George Bush (1989-1993)         Quayle became notorious for his malapropisms. He uttered this mangled version of the UNCF slogan at a United Negro College Fund event on May 9, 1989. It quickly became one of the most-cited “Quaylisms” and, among other things, inspired the title of the unauthorized “autobiography” of Quayle, What a Waste It Is to Lose One’s Mind.

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Comments? Corrections? Questions? Email me or post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook page.

           

Why laws, iPads, writing and porn are like sausages…

THE FAMOUS SAUSAGE SIMILE: “Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made.”        Traditionally attributed to Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898)        German statesman        Bismarck is widely credited with this old political saw, sometimes in the form “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”        However, as noted by authoritative sources like the Quote Investigator site, there’s no proof Bismarck ever uttered or penned either variation. It appears to be a famous misquote that has been wrongly attributed to him for decades.        Many websites cite a quote by the 19th Century American poet John Godfrey Saxe as a possible origin. In an 1869 lecture, Saxe said: “Laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” However, Saxe’s version seems to imply that his audience was already familiar with the basic “laws are like sausages…” formulation.

AN IPAD APPLICATION: “iPads are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made....We in the West don’t really seem to care that Chinese employees work under awful conditions and die in appalling numbers — unless they make shiny things that we use. We claim we don’t want people to suffer, but in fact we just don’t want our iProducts tainted by that suffering. Isn’t that more than a little hypocritical?”        Jon Evans        Canadian novelist, journalist and software engineer        Discussing recent revelations about the brutal working conditions of Chinese workers who make iPads and other Apple products, in his column on the TechCrunch.com site

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN’S VARIATION: “Writing is like sausage making in my view; you’ll all be happier in the end if you just eat the final product without knowing what’s gone into it.”        George R.R. Martin        American author and screenwriter, known especially for his A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels (the basis for HBO’s Game of Thrones series)        Remark to his fans in a June 2009 post on his “Not a Blog” blog

THE OFFENSIVE OBSERVATION: “In defending their work, members of Congress love to repeat a quotation attributed to Otto von Bismarck: ‘If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.’...In many ways, that quotation is offensive to sausage makers; their process is better controlled and more predictable.”        Robert Pear        American journalist        In an article he wrote for The New York Times in December 2010

THE PORN VARIATION: “Sex Pigs: Why Porn is Like Sausage, or the Truth is That – Behind the Scenes – Porn Is Not Very Sexy.”        Benjamin Scuglia        L.A.-based writer and editor of Inside Porn Magazine        Title of a widely-cited article he wrote for the Journal of Homosexuality in 2004

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Comments? Corrections? Questions? Email me or post them on my Famous Quotations Facebook page.