“None so blind as those that will not see.”

THE BIBLE-RELATED QUOTE THAT’S NOT IN THE BIBLE: “None so blind as those that will not see.”        Matthew Henry (1662-1714)        English Presbyterian minister and writer        A saying popularized by Henry’s use in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708)        Contrary to common belief, this is not a quote from the Bible. It’s a proverbial English saying with no clear origin. Matthew Henry helped popularize it by using it several times in his widely-read book of explanatory comments about the Bible. The saying was probably inspired by Bible verses, possibly Matthew 13:13 (“Therefore I speak to them in parables: because they seeing see not…”) or Jeremiah 5:21 (“Hear now this, O foolish people, and without understanding; which have eyes, and see not…”).

THE LAME EXCUSE VARIATION: “There are none so lame as those who will not walk.”        Sir James Marchant (1867-1956)        British philanthropist and author        In the book If I Had Only One Sermon to Preach (1928)

THE TRUE BELIEVER PRINCIPLE: “There are none so positive as those who are but half right.”        William McDonnell (1814-1900)        Canadian writer        In his novel Family Creeds (1879)

SPURGEON’S VERSION:        “There are none so tender as those who have been skinned themselves.”         Rev. Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)        British Baptist preacher        From a sermon included in his book Sermons: Volume 6 (1859)

THE UNWORTHY WISH LIST VERSION: “There are none so bitterly disappointed as those who have got what they wanted, because human nature is so sadly prone to want such things as are unworthy.”        Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler (1860-1929)        British poet and novelist        In her novel Place and Power (1903)

THE IRRITATING BLOWHARDS PRINCIPLE: “None so empty as those who are full of themselves.”        Benjamin Whichcote (1609–1683)        British Puritan divine and scholar        Quoted in the book Moral and Religious Aphorisms Collected from the Manuscript Papers of the Reverend and Learned Doctor Whichcote (1753)

THE IRRITATING CRITICS PRINCIPLE: “There’s none so bland as can’t see.”        Editorial comment in a 1994 issue of the Theatre Record        Regarding a critic’s negative review of an avant-garde adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III

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“THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS” – Woody Guthrie’s enduring words…

WOODY’S FAMED ANTI-FASCIST SLOGAN: “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”        Woody Guthrie (1912-1967)        American folk musician and social activist        The legendary words he put on guitars he played        Some sources say Guthrie got his famous slogan from inscriptions painted on the sides of planes used by leftist Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), in their ultimately doomed attempt to prevent General Francisco Franco from imposing a Fascist dictatorship in Spain.        Guthrie was a committed leftist himself (even an avowed Communist at one time), so that claim may be true. However, I was unable to find any authoritative history books or sites about the Spanish Civil War or any historic photos confirming the presence of the slogan on Republican airplanes, either in English or in the Spanish form “ESTA MÁQUINA MATA FASCISTAS.”        Woody owned many acoustic guitars during his musical career. Photographs of him show that he played at least two adorned with the slogan “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS.” In the best-known, now-iconic photo, the words are hand-written in large letters on the body of a guitar Guthrie has in front of him, hanging by a strap around his neck. In other photos, the words are on what appears to a hand-lettered sticker at the top of a guitar he is playing.        Guthrie was certainly sypmpatico with the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War. But unsurprisingly, in light of his strong pro-union and anti-racist activism, his definition of “Fascists” was broader than the political term applied to 20th Century political regimes in Europe.         The lyrics of his song “All You Fascists” (which Guthrie once performed with the great African-American folk blues musician Sonny Terry on a radio show in 1944) say, in part:           “Race hatred cannot stop us           This one thing we know           Your poll tax and Jim Crow           And greed has got to go...            I’m going into this battle           And take my union gun           We’ll end this world of slavery           Before this battle’s won           You’re bound to lose           You fascists bound to lose!”

PETE’S PEACENIK VERSION: “THIS MACHINE SURROUNDS HATE AND FORCES IT TO SURRENDER”        Pete Seeger (1919-2014)        American folk musician        Words written on Seeger’s favorite banjo         Seeger was a close friend of Guthrie. He was also an equally committed social activist. But he was always a strong believer in pursuing change through non-violent means and preferred to avoid even a metaphorical reference to the use of violence to achieve social change in America. In a 2009 CBS News article, Seeger explained: “He [Woody Guthrie] had a sign on his guitar saying, ‘This machine kills fascists.’ I wanted something a little more peaceful.”

AN UPDATED VERSION FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: “THIS MACHINE DRIVES NEOCON, HOMOPHOBIC, WAR-MONGERING, CORPORATIST, ANTI-INTELLECTUAL, POLLUTING, IMPERIALISTIC, CRYPTO-FASCIST, HATE-SPEAK, FAUX-POPULIST, THEOCRATIC, CHICKENHAWK PRIVATEERS FROM THE ROOM”         Roy Zimmerman         American musician and humorist        Slogan written in a spiral on Zimmerman’s banjo        One of the witty songs on Zimmerman’s 2010 album Real American is “This Machine,” which ends with this funny final chorus: “This machine drives neocon, jingoistic, war-mongering, theocratic, faux-populist, anti-intellectual, drill-a-holic, social Darwinist, racist, sexist, isolationist, derivative insecurities, tax-cheating, C Street, hard line, strip mine, tea-bag, confederate flag, Birthers, Flat-earthers, hate-speak, crypto-fascists — and Brit Hume — screaming from the room.”

THE ROMNEY APPROPRIATION PLAN VARIATION: “THIS MACHINE KILLS MUPPETS”        A witty photoshopped version I saw on the Democratic Underground site        It’s a satiric poke at the infamous remark Romney made about the Muppet character Big Bird during his first presidential debate with President Barack Obama. Romney claimed to love Big Bird but said he would cut federal funding for PBS, which airs the hugely popular children's show that features the Muppets, Sesame Street.

AN APPROPRIATION OF THE SLOGAN BY THE ANTI-GUN CONTROL SIDE: “THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS”        Sign held by a protester opposing a renewed ban on assault rifles in the US         The protester and his sign, which juxtaposed the slogan with a drawing of an assault rifle, were featured in a January 2013 story about the gun control debate on Reuters.com.

A COUNTERQUOTE BY THE PRO-GUN CONTROL SIDE: “This machine kills people.”        Caption on a photo of an assault rifle I saw posted on the now defunct “Social Polemics” website

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“The past is a foreign country...”

L.P. HARTLEY’S OFT-QUOTED APHORISM: “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.”        Leslie P. Hartley (1895-1972)        British novelist and short story writer        The first sentence in his novel The Go-Between (1953)        This is one of the most famous opening lines in modern literary history. It sets the stage for a story about class differences, sexual mores and love in England during the early Twentieth Century. The novel is written as the reminiscence of Leo Colston, a British man in his sixties. In looking through some of his old possessions, Colston comes across a diary he wrote in 1900 when he was thirteen. This sparks memories of the role he played as a fairly clueless “go-between” who carried messages back and forth for an older, upper class girl who was having a socially taboo affair with a “lower class” tenant farmer.        The opening words of the novel have essentially become a modern proverbial saying.

THE JOE BIDEN DILEMMA: “To young progressives, Biden is a voice of the past. The English novelist L.P. Hartley once wrote, ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.’ Like bipartisanship and compromise. And collaboration with outright racists. To older Democrats, however, the past is when things used to work — before Trump came along to cause chaos and disruption. They’re counting on Biden to restore that past.”         Bill Schneider         Political journalist, Professor at George Mason University and author of Standoff: How America Became Ungovernable         In an opinion piece published on The Hill website, July 7, 2019

THE NOSTALGIC VIEWPOINT: “The past may be a foreign country where they do things differently as the L. P. Hartley line has it, but it is one to which many would readily immigrate given the opportunity.”        Michael Sacasas        American writer and theologian        In a post about the Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris (2011) on his blog “The Fairest Thing”

ANTI-NOSTALGIA VIEWPOINT #1: “It’s easy to get washed along in nostalgia, to end up overshadowed by the past, because the past is a perfect country, a place we’ve made better in our heads through selective amnesia.”                       Emily Todd VanDerWerff        American TV reviewer and critic         Reflecting on the HBO series about mobsters, The Sopranos, in a post on the AV Club website

ANTI-NOSTALGIA VIEWPOINT #2: “If the past is a foreign country, it is a shockingly violent one. It is easy to forget how dangerous life used to be, how deeply brutality was once woven into the fabric of daily existence. Cultural memory pacifies the past, leaving us with pale souvenirs whose bloody origins have been bleached away. A woman donning a cross seldom reflects that this instrument of torture was a common punishment in the ancient world; nor does a person who speaks of a whipping boy ponder the old practice of flogging an innocent child in place of a misbehaving prince. We are surrounded by signs of the depravity of our ancestors’ way of life, but we are barely aware of them. Just as travel broadens the mind, a literal-minded tour of our cultural heritage can awaken us to how differently they did things in the past.”        Steven Pinker        Canadian-born Harvard psychologist and author        From his book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (2013)

THE BEAT WRITER’S VIEWPOINT: “All of life is a foreign country.”        Jack Kerouac (1922–1969)        American writer and founding father of the Beat movement in literature        In a letter he wrote on June 24, 1949, cited in the book The Beat Vision: A Primary Sourcebook

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“Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’…”

THE ACTUAL ORIGINAL QUOTE: “When I hear ‘culture’...I unlock my Browning!.” (“Wenn ich Kultur höre...entsichere ich meinen Browning!”)                          Hanns Johst (1890-1978)        German playwright and Nazi SS officer          The commonly misquoted, misattributed line from Johst’s 1933 play Schlageter        This line from Schlageter, Johst’s patriotic homage to the German World War I “martyr” Albert Leo Schlageter, is most widely-known in misquoted paraphrase form, as “When [or Whenever] ever I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun.” The literal translation of the German words “Wenn ich Kultur höre...entsichere ich meinen Browning” is: “When I hear culture...I unlock my Browning.” The ellipsis in the sentence (...) is a pause written into the text by Johst, not an indication of missing text. Most English translations incorrectly use the word whenever in place of when and insert word before culture. In German, Wenn actually means when and wann immer means whenever. Since a Browning is a pistol and the word entsichere (unlock) refers to a gun’s safety catch, the line has also been translated as: “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I release the safety on my pistol!” Sometimes the word revolver is used in place of Browning or pistol. Versions of Johst’s original line have been attributed to Nazi leader Hermann Göring and occasionally to other Nazi officials, such as Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels. These and other top Nazis were indeed fans of the play Schlageter and apparently did quote Johst’s line. But Johst deserves the real credit — or blame — for the origin.

AN ANTI-FOODIE APPLICATION:               “When I hear the words ‘healthy eating,’ I reach for my pork chop.”        Dick Stein                        Jazz show host on Seattle radio station KNKX/KPLU        In a comment on the KPLU website in June 2014

A TECH NERD’S VIEW OF FASHION: “When I hear the word couture, I reach for my cyanide pill.”        A quip posted on the now defunct TechEye.com site

HENRY MILLER’S GENIUS VARIATION: “When I hear the word Culture I reach for my revolver. Remember that? So, too, when I hear the word Genius.”        Henry Miller (1891-1980)        American novelist and painter        In Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

GROUCHO’S VERSION: “When I hear the word culture I reach for my wallet!”        Attributed to Groucho Marx        American comedian, writer, stage, film, radio, and television performer        Attributed to Groucho in Urban History: Volume 22 (1995), published by Cambridge University Press

THE POSTMODERN VARIATION: “When I hear the word ‘postmodern’ I reach for the remote control. I want to change channels immediately, before I get instantaneously and totally bored.”        McKenzie Wark        Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at The New School in New York City        In his book Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events (1994)

THE PUKE BOWL VARIATION: “When I hear the word nobility I reach for the puke bowl.”        Maeve Kelly         Irish novelist, short-story writer and poet        Said by a character in Kelly’s novel Necessary Treasons (1985)

A WINE LOVER’S VERSION: “When I hear the word culture I don’t reach for an Uzi, I reach for a corkscrew and a bottle of venerable and well chilled sauterne. Viniculture. Noble rot, mutating nobler by the minute.”        Glenn O’Brien        American journalist        In an article included in his book Soapbox: Essays, Diatribes, Homilies and Screeds (1997)

A PRODUCER’S VIEW OF GOVERNMENT: “It is unlikely that the government reaches for a revolver when it hears the word culture. The more likely response is to search for a dictionary.”         David Glencross (1936-2007)        Television executive and producer for Britain’s ITV        Comment at the Royal Television Society conference on the future of television in November 1988        Quoted in the Oxford Essential Quotations Dictionary (1998)

A LOVE HATER’S VERSION: “When I hear the word love, I reach for my revolver.”        Gore Vidal (1925-2012)        American-born novelist, screenwriter and playwright        Quoted in the book S and M, Studies in Sadomasochism (1983), edited by Thomas S. Weinberg and G. W. Levi Kamel

QUIRKY, EDGY, INDEPENDENT FILMMAKER’S QUOTE: “‘Independent.’ I’m so sick of that word. I reach for my revolver when I hear the word ‘quirky.’ Or ‘edgy.’ Those words are now becoming labels that are slapped on products to sell them. Anyone who makes a film that is the film they want to make, and it is not defined by marketing analysis or a commercial enterprise, is independent.”        Jim Jarmusch        American movie director, producer, screenwriter and actor        Quoted in the “Personal Quotes” section of his bio on IMDB.com

STEPHEN HAWKING’S CAT QUIP: “When I hear of Schrödinger’s cat, I reach for my pistol.”        Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)        British theoretical physicist and cosmologist        A favorite Hawking quip that’s often mentioned in articles about him. It refers to Erwin Schrödinger’s famed “thought experiment” about a cat that is simultaneous dead and alive. The “Schrödinger’s cat” paradox highlights a problem inherent in certain aspects of quantum theory.

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Thorstein Veblen’s “conspicuous consumption” updated…

   

ORIGIN OF THE FAMOUS TERM: “Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure...In other words, the conspicuous consumer spends money to impress other people and to ensure that others are well aware of the spender’s socioeconomic status.”         Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)         Norwegian-American economist and sociologist         In his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Chapter 4         Veblen coined the term “conspicuous consumption” to refer to the way some people use obviously lavish spending to demonstrate their wealth (often regardless of whether they are actually wealthy).

THE NEVER TOO RICH OR THIN VERSION:   “Being thin is a kind of inconspicuous consumption that distinguishes the rich at a time when most poor people can more easily afford to be fat than thin. Since idealized sex objects are modeled partly on class-associated images, this is surely a factor. For a man to have a thin woman in his arm is a sign of his own worth, and a woman increases her market value by being slender. Fat women are either accorded a nonsexual status in this system, or else (and less publicly) are granted a degraded 'lower class' kind of animal sexuality.”         Marcia Millman         Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz         In her book Such a Pretty Face: Being Fat in America (1980), Chapter 6

EUGENE’S VERSION: “Conspicuous waste beyond the imagination of Thorstein Veblen has become the mark of American life.  As a nation we find ourselves overbuilt, if not overhoused; overfed, although millions of poor people are undernourished; overtransported in overpowered cars; and also . . . overdefended or overdefensed.”          Eugene McCarthy (1916-2005)         U.S. Democratic politician and author         In his book America Revisited (1978)

A TESLA CRITIC’S OPINION: “The Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) roadster has a 1,000 pound battery that needs to be replaced every 7 years at a cost of about $36,000...It’s conspicuous consumption for wealthy liberals — in much the same way that huge SUVs were the vehicle of choice for rich conservatives a few years ago.”         Kevin McElroy         American investment analyst         In a post on his blog on the Wyatt Investment website         The base price of the newest model of the Tesla Roadster is $200,000.

A WEALTH TAX CRITIC’S OPINION: “Many...rich Americans aren’t just rich; they are responsibly rich. They made their money the new fashioned way: They worked for it. But they know that luck, not sweat, graced their paths. Their focus is on giving back, not taking more. They pay their taxes, found real charities, endow universities, support hospitals, fund medical research and gamble on products that can help us all. Their lives are lives of conspicuous philanthropy, not conspicuous consumption.”         Laurence Kotlikoff         Professor of Economics at Boston University and columnist for The Hill political website         In an opinion piece arguing against imposing huge taxes on wealthy Americans

THE EXTRAVAGANT SITCOM APPLICATION: “Sex and the City 2" (R) Sarah Jessica Parker and her gal pals are back in a bloated commercial for conspicuous consumption. It amounts to a long shopping trip through Manhattan followed by a long shopping trip through a resort hotel in Abu Dhabi.”         Michael Giuliano         Film critic and Professor of Film/Interdisciplinary Arts at Howard University         In a “capsule review” of Sex and the City 2 in the Fort Meade, Maryland newspaper in 2010

THE EXTRAVAGANT IPHONE APPLICATION: “The new champion of conspicuous consumption – iPhone division, the Kings Button iPhone mod, in which Austrian jeweler Peter Aloisson will encrust your device in three kinds of 18-carat gold (white, yellow and rose) and 6.6 carats of diamonds, for the ‘What Financial Crisis?’ sum of $2.5 million.”         Lonnie Lazar         American technology writer, musician, web designer and attorney         In his column on the Cult of Mac website

THE WALMART SHOPPERS APPLICATION: “Veblen argues that no class, not even the poorest, forgoes all conspicuous consumption. This is even truer of inconspicuous consumption. Even the poorest of the poor can afford a T-shirt with a Caesar’s Palace logo from the half-price rack at Wal-Mart or a hamburger in a bag sporting McDonald’s golden arches. Even the street person can fish things out of the local trash can. Many of the poor spend inordinate amounts on such inconspicuous consumption and, in the process, may ignore essential needs and purchases. This tends to support Veblen’s view that people will endure a quite shabby private life to have the public symbols they deem desirable.”         George Ritzer         American sociologist         In his book Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption (2005), Chapter 10

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