“He can run, but he can’t hide.”

THE BROWN BOMBER’S IMMORTAL WORDS: “He can run, but he can’t hide.”                     Joe Louis (1914-1981)                     American heavyweight boxing champion, nicknamed “The Brown Bomber”          This was Joe’s famous comment about boxer Billy Conn, shortly before their heavyweight title rematch at Yankee Stadium in New York City on June 19, 1946.                     Louis was known for his devastating punches and had defeated Conn in a previous fight in 1941. But Conn, “The Pittsburg Kid,” was lighter and faster, creating speculation that he could win their rematch.                     On June 8, 1946, during one of the daily interviews he had with reporters in the days leading up to the fight, a reporter asked Louis: “If he [Conn] runs, will you chase him?”                     Joe gave the memorable response: “He can run, but he can’t hide.” It appeared in news stories the next day in papers throughout the country.         Louis ended up winning the fight by a knockout in the eighth round. The next day, a headline in the New York Times said: “Louis Proves His Own Prediction: Conn Could Run, but Couldn’t Hide.”                     Joe’s quip became and remains a commonly-used taunt in the U.S. and other English-speaking countries and he is generally assumed to have coined it. However, quotation expert Ralph Keyes speculated in his book The Quote Verifier that Louis may have been repeating a line that was already circulating as “street talk.” And, language maven Barry Popik discovered that Louis had made a similar remark in 1939. Speaking to a reporter about an upcoming fight with Bob Pastor in Detroit, Louis said: “It’s all right to have good legs but remember one thing—when you’re in the ring you can run, but you can’t hide.”                   What does seem clear is that Louis deserves credit for popularizing the saying “He can run, but he can’t hide” and he uttered the most famous use of those words before his 1946 fight with Billy Conn.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD VERSION: “We can run but we can’t hide from it Of all possible worlds we only got one, we gotta ride on it Whatever we’ve done we’ll never get far from what we leave behind Baby we can run, run, run but we can’t hide.”        Lyrics by Grateful Dead band member John Barlow for the Dead song “We Can Run”        Music by band member Brent Mydland       “We Can Run” is included on the Grateful Dead’s 1989 album Built To Last and several later Dead compilations.

THE LIVING DEAD VERSION:         “You can run from the grave, but you can’t hide.”        Headline on the back cover of Jeaniene Frost’s vampire novel One Foot in the Grave (2008)

THE GLOOMY SONG OF DAVID VARIATION: “You can run, hide, or die. But wherever you go, there you’ll be.”        Amy Harmon        American novelist        In her novel The Song of David (2015)

THE GLOOMY WHALE SONG VARIATION: “You can run but you can't hide...but I can try. I feel air catch in my lungs and I get a cramp in my side and this pain, this wonderful physical pain that I can place, reminds me that after all I am still alive.”        Jodi Picoult        American novelist        In her book Songs of the Humpback Whale: A Novel in Five Voices (2001)

REAGAN’S FAMOUS TERRORIST TAUNT: “I am proud to be the commander-in-chief of the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who deployed, supported and played the crucial role in the delivery of these terrorists to Italian authorities...These young Americans sent a message to terrorists everywhere. A message ‘you can run but you can’t hide.’”        Ronald Reagan (1911-2004)                     40th President of the United States        Remarks to the press on October 11, 1985 after American troops captured the terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro cruise ship and brutally murdered passenger Leon Klinghoffer.

THE KINDA CRAZY ONE-LEGGED MAN VERSION: “He can’t run, but he can hide.”        Ben Muessig                     American journalist        This is Muessig’s punny opening line in an article he wrote for the Huffington Post in 2010 about a one-legged man who successfully evaded the police in Orange County, Florida on foot (literally one foot in this case) after driving recklessly through a residential community and smashing his car into a power pole.

THE KINDA CREEPY GEORGE W. BUSH FISHING VERSION: “I want to teach Gigi my young granddaughter, how to fish...Out on the boat she is captive. She can squirm, but she can’t hide. I will tell her I love her. And when she asks, ‘Are you crying?’ I’ll say, ‘Yes, but these are tears of joy. Older guys do that, Gigi.’ You can do that kind of thing when you go mackerel fishing.”        George H.W. Bush                     41st President of the United States          An excerpt from a letter Bush wrote in September 1998, included in the book Chicken Soup for the Fisherman’s Soul (2000), edited by Mark Victor Hansen, Ken McKowen and Dahlynn McKowen

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“You are what you eat” (among other things)…

THE FAMOUS ORIGINAL QUOTE: “You Are What You Eat”                     Dr. Victor Hugo Lindlahr (1895-1969)        Pioneering American health food advocate        The title of his popular and influential book, first published in 1942, which promotes the idea that eating lots of fresh fruits and vegetables (a “Catabolic Diet” by Lindlahr) is the key to good health.        Lindlahr is generally credited with popularizing the phrase, though as noted on the great Phrase Finder site, versions had been floating around as far back as the early 1800s French food gourmet Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826) included the aphorism “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are” in his 1825 book The Physiology of Taste. German philosopher Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach (1804-1872) said in an 1863 essay “A man is what he eats.”         “You are what you eat” was picked up and recycled by many nutritionists and food writers in the 1950s. In the 1960s, it gained new popularity as a slogan used by organic food advocates, further popularized by the 1968 semi-documentary music/comedy film You Are What You Eat, which features musicians Peter Yarrow, Barry McGuire, Tiny Tim, Paul Butterfield and lots of Hippies.

THE DONALD TRUMP PRINCIPLE: “You are what you think you are…Oftentimes, perception is more important than fact.”                      Donald Trump        Former businessman turned politician; elected the 45th President of the United States in November 2016        A comment Trump made in book Think Big and Kick Ass in Business and Life (originally published in 2007)        I suspect many people would likely agree that The Donald has adhered to this belief throughout his business and political career.

THE SOCIAL MEDIA PRINCIPLE: “You are what you post.”                      An aphorism about social media posts on the internet – made by more than 800,000 posts on the internet.

ZAPPA’S VARIATION: “You are what you is You is what you am A cow don’t make ham... You are what you is An’ that’s all it ‘tis.”        Frank Zappa        American musician, filmmaker and entrepreneur        Lyrics from the title song of Zappa's 1981 double album You Are What You Is

THE FASHION ETHICS UPDATE: “You are what you wear. Today, it’s becoming more and more important to choose your apparel consciously and to make sustainable fashion choices.”                     Farla Efros        President of retail strategic firm HRC Advisory, which advises corporations on ethical operating practices        Quoted in a 2016 HuffingtonPost article about “fair trade” fashion wear

BURKE’S LAW: “You are what you know.”                      James Burke        British science historian, documentary producer and author        In his excellent book The Day the Universe Changed (1985)

THE CRITTERS COUNTERQUOTE: “You are what they eat.”                      Advertising slogan for the movie Critters 3 (1991), one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s early films

BUDDHA’S DEEP THOUGHT: “We are what we think.”                      Buddha (563-483 B.C.)        Indian spiritual teacher whose teachings are the foundation of the Buddhist religion        This is the popular English translation of the opening words of Verse 1 of The Dhammapada, as translated by Thomas Byrom in the mid-1970s. Although Byrom’s version has been widely read and quoted, it’s a loose, creative translation that has been criticized as inaccurate by some Buddhist scholars. Another alternate, somewhat more literal translation of the line is: “All things have the nature of mind.”

WEEKLY WORLD NEWS REINCARNATION VARIATION: “You are what you were. Expert reveals how past lives control everything you do – TODAY!”                      Headlines from a story on page 15 of the November 6, 2001 issue of the Weekly World News        I still miss the print version of WWN, but I’m glad there’s an online version now.

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“Familiarity breeds contempt” – and various other things…

THE FAMILIAR SAYING ABOUT FAMILIARITY: “Familiarity breeds contempt.”        Aesop (c. 620-564 B.C.)        The moral of “The Fox and the Lion” story in Aesop’s Fables        In traditional English translations of Aesop’s Fables, there’s a phrase at the end of each brief tale that summarizes “the moral of the story.” The origin of the proverbial saying “Familiarity breeds contempt” is widely credited to the traditional translation of Aesop’s fable “The Fox and the Lion,” which reads:         When first the Fox saw the Lion he was terribly frightened, and ran away and hid himself in the wood. Next time however he came near the King of Beasts he stopped at a safe distance and watched him pass by. The third time they came near one another the Fox went straight up to the Lion and passed the time of day with him, asking him how his family were, and when he should have the pleasure of seeing him again; then turning his tail, he parted from the Lion without much ceremony.        “Familiarity Breeds Contempt”

AN UNFAMILIAR COUNTERQUOTE: “Just as unfamiliarity breeds fear, an intimate introduction to multiple cultures breeds trust.”        Daniel Katz         Professor of History and labor history expert, City University of New York (CUNY)        In his 2012 book Labor Rising: The Past and Future of Working People in America (co-edited with Richard A. Greenwald)

J.K. GALBRAITH’S SOCIOECONOMIC OBSERVATION: “Familiarity may breed contempt in some areas of human behavior, but in the field of social ideas it is the touchstone of acceptability. Because familiarity is such an important test of acceptability, the acceptable ideas have great stability.”        John Kenneth Galbraith (1908-2006)        American economist        In Chapter 2 of his pioneering book about social economics, The Affluent Society (1958)

ALDOUS HUXLEY’S PSYCHEDELICIZED OBSERVATION: “Familiarity breeds indifference. We have seen too much pure, bright color at Woolworth’s to find it intrinsically transporting. And here we may note that, by its amazing capacity to give us too much of the best things, modern technology has tended to devaluate the traditional vision-inducing materials.”        Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)        British author and social critic        In his book length essay Heaven and Hell (1956), often published together with his earlier essays extolling the benefits of hallucinogenic drugs, The Doors of Perception (1954)

A PRETTY LITTLE LIAR’S VARIATION: Melissa Hastings (actress Torrey DeVitto): “I was hoping you'd be happy for me.” Spencer Hastings (Troian Bellisario): “Well, you know what they say about hope: it breeds eternal misery.”        Some repartee from the pilot episode of the TV show Pretty Little Liars (2010)

A PRETTY WEIRD SEXUAL THEORY: “The undue familiarity usually existing between husband and wife is a feeder of psycho-sexual aberrations. Once the halo of sex mystery is dispelled, romance often fails completely... Familiarity breeds satiety. Satiety is the parent of sexual discontent. The satiated, discontented man often browses in queer pastures in search of new thrills for his exhausted psycho-sexual centers.”        George Frank Lydston (1858–1923)        An American urologist who had some unusual theories (and issues)        The quote above is from Lydston’s book Impotence and Sterility: with Aberrations of the Sexual Function and Sex-Gland Implantation (1917).        In addition to coming up with the odd theory that men who became too “familiar” with their wives would turn gay, Lydston experimented with the transplantation of testicular tissue from animals into humans, as a form of “androgen therapy” for older men. The donors included dogs, goats, monkeys and even guinea pigs. (Really. I’m not making this stuff up.)

MARK TWAIN'S BETTER KNOWN SEXUAL THEORY: “Familiarity breeds contempt — and children.”         Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens; 1835-1910)         A quip Twain recorded in his journal in 1894; included in his posthumously published Notebooks (1935)

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“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)

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10 things friends don’t let friends do...

THE FAMOUS ORIGINAL AD SLOGAN: “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.”         Public service ad slogan launched nationwide in the U.S. in 1983         First used in billboard ads by the Outdoor Advertising Association, then used in a series of memorable TV commercials aired by the Ad Council.

THE ZUCKERBERG MONEY MEME VERSION: "Friends don't let friends copy and paste memes."        Amit Chowdhry        Tech journalist for Forbes magazine        Headline for his Dec. 29, 2015 post on Forbes.com about those absurd Facebook posts that say Mark Zuckerberg is giving away money to people who repost Facebook posts that say that Mark Zuckerberg is giving away money.

THE CELEBRITY CANDIDATE VERSION: “Friends don't let friends vote Trump”        T-shirt slogan on Zazzle.com. (Of course, there are similar versions naming Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and other candidates. ‘Tis the season for politics.)

THE WINE SNOB DICTUM: “Friends don’t let friends drink chardonnay.”        Michele Anna Jordan         Restaurant and food critic and author        In her book The Good Cook’s Book of Days (1995)

THE WALKING DEAD DICTUM: “Friends don’t let friends reanimate.”      T-shirt slogan suggesting what every Walking Dead fan knows they need to do if their friend is bitten by a zombie.

THE SCUBA LOVERS VARIATION: “Friends don't let friends drink and dive.”        An "alcohol demotivational poster" on the DemotivationalPosters.org site.

THE CAT LOVERS VARIATION: “Friends don't let friends eat lilies.”        Seriously! As explained on the PreventiveVet.com site: “It takes only a nibble on one leaf or stem, or the ingestion of a small amount of lily pollen (easy to do when a cat grooms itself) to send a cat into acute kidney failure.”

THE SILLY FRIENDS VARIATION: “Friends don't let friends do silly things ... alone.”        A cute photo meme on the WeHeartIt.com site

THE ANTI-BULLY SLOGAN: “Friends don’t let friends bully”        Slogan for a public service advertising campaign launched in 2015 by the Seattle-based Free2Luv.org organization.

THE ANTI-FOOTBALL SLOGAN: “Friends don’t let friends watch college football”       A QuickMeme.com photo quip that some people (including me) can relate to.

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