“Inside every fat man there is a thin man trying to get out.”

CYRIL’S PRECURSOR TO THE FAMOUS SAYING: “Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.”        Cyril Connolly (1903-1974)        English writer, editor and critic         An oft-cited line from Connolly’s book The Unquiet Grave, pt. 2 (first published in 1944)         Cyril Connolly is frequently credited as the originator of the modern proverbial saying “Inside every fat man there is a thin man trying to get out,” also heard with the ending “…struggling to get out.” Some sources trace it to an earlier quote by English author George Orwell. In fact, neither of the commonly-used versions of the quip are what Connolly or Orwell actually wrote.          Connolly’s line in his book of essays The Unquiet Grave is: “Imprisoned in every fat man a thin one is wildly signalling to be let out.”        Orwell’s earlier quote mentions the idea of a thin man inside a fat one, but says nothing about the thin man signaling (to use the modern American spelling) or struggling to get out. In his 1939 novel Coming Up For Air the central character, George Bowling, says: “I’m fat, but I’m thin inside. Has it ever struck you that there’s a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there’s a statue inside every block of stone?”

KINGSLEY’S COROLLARY: “Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.”         Kingsley Amis (1922-1995)        English novelist, critic and poet        In his novel One Fat Englishman (1963)

THE BELLY WISDOM THEOREM: “The old saying is wrong: It’s not that ‘Inside every fat woman there's a thin woman screaming to get out.’ The reality is that inside EVERY woman, there's a FAT woman trying to get out and breathe, relax her belly center, undo her pants, let her thighs roar with thunder, and her breasts feel the breeze!”        Bell Pine Art Farm        From the company’s description of its “Belly Wisdom” statuette

THE RUPAUL RULE: “Inside every gay man, there is a big, soulful, divalicious black woman vying to get out.”        From a post on The Way I See It Theatre Blog (Aug. 26, 2011)

THE NATIONAL LAMPOON LETTER: “Sirs: Outside every thin Canadian, there's a fat American, screaming to get in.”        A letter to the editor published in National Lampoon, June 1964, attributed to Canadian reader Chris Kelly, but probably written by the editors

THE OLD AGE AXIOM: “Inside every old person is a young person wondering what the hell happened.”        Modern proverbial saying and t-shirt slogan, sometimes attributed to American gospel singer Cora Harvey Armstrong and sometimes to the British fantasy and science fiction novelist Terry Pratchett.

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“The rich are different”… The real story behind the famed “exchange” between F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway.

If you’re a quotation buff, you’ve probably heard of a legendary exchange about “rich people” that supposedly took place between the American novelists F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) and Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961).

Fitzgerald is usually quoted as saying either “The rich are different from you and me” or “The rich are different from us.”

Hemingway is quoted as responding: “Yes, they have more money."

In fact, this quote-counterquote repartee never actually occurred. But it is based on things written by Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

Here’s how it became a legend…

In 1925, Fitzgerald wrote a short story titled “The Rich Boy.” In 1926, it was published in Red Book magazine and included what became a very popular collection of Fitzgerald's early short stories, titled All the Sad Young Men.

The third paragraph of the story says:

     "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

Clearly, that’s not a favorable view of rich people.

But years later, Ernest Hemingway, who had a sometimes-warm, sometimes-acrimonious relationship with Fitzgerald, decided to mock those lines from “The Rich Boy” in his short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro.”

Hemingway’s original version of “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” was printed in the August 1936 issue of Esquire magazine. In a passage in that original version, Hemingway wrote:

     “The rich were dull and they drank too much, or they played too much backgammon. They were dull and they were repetitious. He remembered poor Scott Fitzgerald and his romantic awe of them and how he had started a story once that began, ‘The very rich are different from you and me.’ And how some one had said to Scott, Yes, they have more money. But that was not humorous to Scott. He thought they were a special glamorous race and when he found they weren't it wrecked him as much as any other thing that wrecked him.”

Understandably, Fitzgerald was shocked and offended.

He expressed his dismay to Hemingway in a letter. He also complained to Maxwell Perkins, the editor who oversaw publication of both writers’ novels and story collections at the Charles Scribner’s Sons book company. Hemingway responded with what Fitzgerald described as a “crazy letter,” a rambling diatribe that offered no real explanation or apology.

Perkins tried to smooth things over between his two prized writers and used his editorial power to fix the source of the problem when Scribner’s reprinted “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” in the 1938 anthology of Hemingway stories, The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories.

In the version of the story in that book, the name “Scott Fitzgerald” was changed to “Julian.” It has appeared that way in most subsequent reprintings.

Unfortunately for Fitzgerald, he made the mistake of writing a cryptic entry in a personal notebook that cemented the legendary version of his “exchange” with Hemingway into literary history.

The entry said simply: “They have more money. (Ernest’s wisecrack.)”

After Fitzgerald died in 1940, his friend, the noted critic and book reviewer Edmund Wilson, compiled a collection of his essays and unpublished writings in a book titled The Crack-Up. It was published in 1945. Wilson included various entries from Fitzgerald’s notebooks in the anthology.

One of them was the brief note about “Ernest’s wisecrack.”

Wilson decided to add an explanatory footnote for that entry in the book. He wrote:

     “Fitzgerald had said, ‘The rich are different from us.’ Hemingway had replied, ‘Yes, they have more money.’”

Then, the famous literary critic Lionel Trilling repeated what he called this “famous exchange” that “everyone knows” in a review and essay about The Crack-Up, published in The Nation.

After that, many other articles and books cited this “exchange” as if it were an actual conversation between Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

And thus a famous quote-counterquote myth was born.

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Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable…

THE LINE THAT LED TO A FAMOUS MISQUOTE: “Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us...comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable.”         Finley Peter Dunne (1867-1936)         American journalist and humorist         Dunne put this quote in the mouth of “Mr. Dooley,” the witty Irish character who was featured in Dunne’s popular newspaper column relating what Dooley said on various topics in a heavy Irish brogue. The line was first used in a column titled “Mr. Dooley on Newspaper Publicity,” published in many US newspapers on October 5, 1902 and reprinted in the book collecting Dunne’s columns, Observations by Mr. Dooley (1902). Dooley’s remark led to many other quotes about comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable.         The full quote as Dunne wrote it is:         “Th’ newspaper does ivrything f’r us. It runs th’ polis foorce an’ th’ banks, commands th’ milishy, conthrols th’ ligislachure, baptizes th’ young, marries th’ foolish, comforts th’ afflicted, afflicts th’ comfortable, buries th’ dead an’ roasts thim aftherward.”         The plain English “translation” is:         “The newspaper does everything for us. It runs the police force and the banks, commands the militia, controls the legislature, baptizes the young, marries the foolish, comforts the afflicted, afflicts the comfortable, buries the dead and roasts them afterward.”         Dunne’s quote is often misquoted as “The duty [or job] of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Indeed, that version has become a kind of motto for defenders of the free press. Ironically, Dunne’s piece was not meant as praise of the press. It’s actually a negative jab at newspapers who Mr. Dooley thinks print far too much minutiae about almost everything and everyone and pokes into the private lives of citizens far too much.         Mr. Dooley complains that, because newspapers regularly print gossip and photos about local citizens, “There are no such things as private citizens” anymore. Interestingly, many of his criticisms of newspapers sound similar to modern concerns about the internet and social media.

THE NEWSPAPER VERSION: “Mr. Brady, it is the duty of a newspaper to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”         Actor Spencer Tracy, in the 1960 movie Inherit the Wind. Tracy, playing defense lawyer Henry Drummond, says the line to Fredric March, playing prosecuting attorney Matthew Harrison Brady.         The film is an adaptation of the 1955 play of the same name, a fictionalized account of the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial.” Tracy’s famous line is not in the play, which was written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee. The movie script based on the play was written by Nedrick Young and Harold Jacob Smith. I suspect the famous line was created by Young, who was blacklisted as a Communist sympathizer during the McCarthy era and hired (secretly) by the film’s director Stanley Kramer. Young didn’t coin the saying. As noted in a post on the Quote Investigator site, a filler item in 1914 a newspaper in Danville, Kentucky said: “Mr. Dooley says the duty of the newspapers is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” That was followed by many similar uses of this saying about newspapers that predate the movie Inherit the Wind, which premiered in London on July 7, 1960.

THE FAUX CLARENCE DARROW QUOTE: “The most human thing we can do is comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”         Clarence Darrow (1857-1938)         American lawyer and free speech activist         It’s interesting that many internet posts and some books published in recent decades attribute this quote to Darrow, the defense attorney in the real life Scopes Monkey Trial. I couldn’t find any evidence that Darrow ever said or wrote such a line. I think it’s probably a faux quote created after the movie line in Inherit the Wind became famous.

THE FAUX WOODY GUTHRIE QUOTE: “It’s a folk singer’s job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people.”         Woody Guthrie (1912-1967)         American folk musician and liberal political activist         This line is widely attributed to Guthrie in internet posts, but never with any specific source. As far as I can tell, he never actually said it.

THE CHRISTIAN VERSION: “The business of the ministry is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”         Frederick W. Burnham (1871-1960)         Pastor in Richmond, Virginia         In a March 1944 editorial in a Latrobe, Pennsylvania newspaper, Burnham attributed this saying to an unnamed “young minister.” It’s an early version of many quotes that have applied the “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” concept to Christianity and Christian ministries.

THE ELEANOR ROOSEVELT APPLICATION: “No woman has ever so comforted the distressed – or distressed the comfortable.”         Clare Boothe Luce (1903-1987)         American author, Conservative Republican politician and US Ambassador              Luce used this line speech in which she praised Eleanor Roosevelt at a May 1950 event, during which the left-leaning, Democratic widow of President Franklin D. Roosevelt received an award for her service to the poor and “underprivileged.” Back then, political opponents actually said some nice things about each other.

J.K. GALBRAITH’S VARIATION: “In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”         John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)         Canadian-born economist, public official, and liberal activist         From his 1989 commencement speech at Smith College, Massachusetts, titled “In Pursuit of the Simple Truth.” (Because London’s Guardian newspaper reprinted the speech on July 28, 1989, that is the usual citation for the source, rather than the commencement speech.)

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“Knowledge is power” – and everything most people know about that quote is wrong!

THE FLAWED TRADITIONAL ATTRIBUTION: “Knowledge itself is power.” (“...ipsa scientia potestas est”)        Francis Bacon (1561-1626)        English philosopher and essayist        Meditationes Sacrae, De Haeresibus (1597)        Thousands of books and websites claim that Sir Francis Bacon coined or first recorded the saying “Knowledge is power.” In fact, that concept existed long before Bacon’s time and the Latin phrase “scientia potestas est,” which means “Knowledge is power,” probably did as well. Bacon used a version of it in his essay De Haeresibus (“Of Heresies”), one of ten essays in his book Meditationes Sacrae (“Religious Meditations”), which he wrote in Latin.         In one of Bacon’s typically long, run-on sentences, full of much religious and philosophical blah-blah-blah, the Latin words scientia (knowledge, science), est (is) and potestas (power, strength) are embedded in a longer phrase. The full phrase is “nam et ipsa scientia potestas est.” This is generally translated as “for knowledge itself is power.” That’s not quite as pithy as “Knowledge is power.” Moreover, in the context of the sentence and Bacon’s points in the essay, it doesn’t actually have the literal meaning that has become a cliché. In the essay, Bacon was making an obtuse argument about atheists and other people who deny the will and power of God, including those who give more weight to God’s knowledge than His power. Bacon argued that God’s knowledge is itself power.

COOLIO’S COUNTERQUOTE: “If knowledge is power and power is knowledge, then   how so many idiots be graduating from colleges?”         Coolio        American rap musician, record producer and actor         A line in the lyrics of his song “The Winner” (on the Space Jam movie soundtrack)

CERSEI’S COUNTERQUOTE: “Power is power!”        Cersei Lannister (played by actress Lena Headey)         A point she makes, menacingly, to Lord Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish (actor Aidan Gillen), in the first episode of Season Two of HBO’s series Game of Thrones.        In this intense scene, Baelish hints to Cersei that he knows she has an incestuous relationship with her brother and might use that knowledge to his advantage. “Prominent families often forget a simple truth,” he says. “Knowledge is power.”        Cersei responds by telling her guards: “Seize him. Cut his throat.” The guards grab Baelish and prepare to carry out her order. As Baelish begins to panic, Cersei says almost flippantly: “Stop. Oh, wait. I’ve changed my mind. Let him go.” After they do, she glares at Baelish and tells him an even higher truth that applies in the world of Game of Thrones: “Power is power!”

THE KICK-BUTT COUNTERQUOTE: “Knowledge is not power. It’s the implementation of knowledge that is power. It’s not what you know that matters, it’s what you do with what you know that matters.”        Larry Winget        American author and motivational speaker        In his book Shut Up, Stop Whining, and Get a Life: A Kick-Butt Approach to a Better Life  (2011)

A VERSION APPLICABLE TO FERGUSON? “Knowledge may be power under some circumstances, but, in others, power rests on denial and studied displacement. This image of a smoothly functioning social order lends itself to the creation of the capacity for fascist self-delusion.”        An observation in the book Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change        Edited by Carol J. Greenhouse, Elizabeth Mertz, Kay B. B. Warren        (Cartoon by Kevin Siers)

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“Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” (And maybe 90% mental?)

THE FAMOUS EDISON QUOTE (THAT HE PROBABLY NEVER SAID): “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”        Attributed to Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)        American inventor and businessman         This oft-cited line is traditionally credited to Edison and he did say some things like it. However, the familiar version of the quote is not included in his writings or in his recorded speeches or interviews. The first mention of a definition of genius by Edison is in an article about him in the April 1898 issue of the Ladies Home Journal. A paragraph in that article says:        “Once, when asked to give his definition of genius, Mr. Edison replied: ‘Two per cent is genius and ninety-eight per cent is hard work.’ At another time, when the argument that genius was inspiration was brought before him, he said: ‘Bah! Genius is not inspired. Inspiration is perspiration.’”         An article in a 1902 issue of Scientific American claimed that Edison once remarked: “Genius is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration,” but it gave no source for the quote. That 2%/98% definition was also mentioned in a 1908 biography of Edison and a 1911 article in Chamber’s Journal — without providing any information on when Edison supposedly said it. Then in 1932, a year after Edison died, an article Harper's Monthly Magazine noted that sometime around 1902 or 1903 Edison said: “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” No source for the quote was given by Harper’s. However, this version became legendary and is cited by many books and websites (often giving Harper’s Monthly Magazine as the source).

YOGI BERRA’S ADAPTABLE ADAPTATION: “Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”        Yogi Berra        US baseball catcher, manager and coach known for his funny, linguistically unique sayings        This is one of the famous “Yogisms” that Yogi is generally believed to have actually said, though various versions have been cited and he used somewhat different wording at various times. In The Yogi Book: I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said! (1998), he quotes himself as saying: “90% of the game is half mental.” In What Time Is It? You Mean Now? (2010) he cites it as “Ninety percent of this game is half-mental.” In a commencement speech at Montclair State University (New Jersey) in 1996, Yogi gave the line a twist, telling the graduating students: “Remember that whatever you do in life, 90 percent of it is half mental.” In Baseball's Greatest Quotations, quotation maven Paul Dickson notes that baseball outfielder Jim Wolford may have used a version of the line before Yogi made it his own.

A T-SHIRT FOR “GENIOUSES”: “Genious is one per cent inspiration and ninety nine per cent perspiration.”        A version on the Edison saying printed on a t-shirt with the word genius misspelled, offered for sale by the upscale European fashion store chain H & M.        (Spotted and mocked by the Metro.co.uk.com site in April 2015.)

A TIP FOR WASHINGTON SPEECHWRITERS: “Successful Washington speechwriting is one percent literary talent and ninety-nine percent political infighting.”         Attributed to Will Sparks        Former speechwriter for President Johnson        Quoted by Bradley H. Patterson Jr. in his book The Ring of Power: the White House Staff and Its Expanding Role in Government

THE POLICE WORK ADAPTATION: “Real police work is ninety-nine percent facts, one percent inspiration.”        Glover Wright        British author and former rock ‘n’ roll guitarist         Line said by a character in his novel The Torch (1980)

For more variations of Edison’s famed quote, see this previous Quote/Counterquote post.

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Genius is one percent inspiration – or maybe two…

THE FAMOUS EDISON QUOTE (THAT HE MAY NOT HAVE SAID): “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”        Attributed to Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)        American inventor and businessman         This well-known witticism (often given without the word “and” after “inspiration”) is traditionally credited to Thomas Edison. He did say some things like it. But those exact words do not appear in his writings or in his recorded speeches or interviews. The first mention of a definition of genius by Edison is in an article about him in the April 1898 issue of the Ladies Home Journal. A paragraph in that article says:        “Once, when asked to give his definition of genius, Mr. Edison replied: ‘Two per cent is genius and ninety-eight per cent is hard work.’ At another time, when the argument that genius was inspiration was brought before him, he said: ‘Bah! Genius is not inspired. Inspiration is perspiration.’”         An article in a 1902 issue of Scientific American claimed that Edison once remarked: “Genius is 2 percent inspiration and 98 percent perspiration,” but it gave no source for the quote. That 2%/98% definition was also mentioned in a 1908 biography of Edison and a 1911 article in Chamber’s Journal — without providing any information on when Edison supposedly said it. Then in 1932, a year after Edison died, an article Harper's Monthly Magazine noted that sometime around 1902 or 1903 Edison said: “Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.” No source for the quote was given by Harper’s. However, this version became legendary and is cited by many books and websites (often giving Harper’s Monthly Magazine as the source).

THE **** HAPPENS VERSION: “Life is one percent what happens to you, and ninety-nine percent how you respond to it.”        Shubhra Krishan        Indian born American journalist, author and holistic health advocate        In her book Essential Ayurveda (2003). Quoting something she’d read.

JOHN GARDNER’S COUNTERQUOTE: “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent obdurate stupidity.”        John C. Gardner (1933-1982)        American scholar and novelist         A line attributed to a fictional writer in Gardner’s novel Stillness and Shadows (1986)

THE SEX AND CRIME VARIATION: “Sex is like crime. Only one percent motivation and ninety-nine percent opportunity.”        Len Deighton          British novelist and historian        In his novel Mexico Set (1985)

THE ASSASSINATION VARIATION: “Assassination is one percent shooting, ninety-nine percent preparation.”         Jeffrey Donovan (as former spy Michael Westen)        In the “False Flag” episode of Burn Notice (Season 1, Ep. 10)

THE BUSINESS SUCCESS VARIATION: “Succeeding in this business is ninety-nine percent perseverance and one percent talent. Congratulations, gentlemen, you’re ninety-nine percent of the way there.”          Bob Balaban (as the character Arthur Planck)        In the movie Dedication (2007)

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