Sorry, Wrong Answer

by Rod L. Evans, Ph. D.

  13. The inventor of the expression “Iron Curtain” was not Winston Churchill, who used it in a 1946 speech in which he said, “From Stalin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Atlantic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.” Rather, in 1914, during World War I, the Queen of Belgium said, “Between them [Germany] and me there is now a bloody iron curtain which has descended forever.” Nazi Joseph Goebbels also used the phrase in 1945 to express concern over the Russian encirclement of Germany. In short, others had used the expression long before Churchill.

  14. The quotation about hating dogs and children was not from W. C. Fields but from the teacher, scholar, and humorist Leo Roston, who delivered those remarks at a tribute dinner in honor of W. C. Fields.

  15. The first person to say or write “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” was probably the first person to misquote Alexander Pope, who said, in “An Essay on Criticism,” “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”

  16. The libertarian sentiment about free speech sounds Voltairean, but it is not from Voltaire’s pen. E. Beatrice Hall, while writing under the name of S. G. Tallentyre, wrote those words as a paraphrase of a sentence from Voltaire’s Essay on Tolerance: “Think of yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.” Note that Norbert Guterman claimed that Voltaire wrote in a letter to M. le Riche “I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.” The letter, asserted Guterman, was written on February 6, 1770. In short, although the sentence expressed in the quotation ascribed to Voltaire is Voltairean, there is no evidence to support that he said those words or, more accurately, their French equivalent.

  17. The first person who said “ blood, sweat, and tears” was the first person to misquote Winston Churchill, who actually said, “ blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

  18. The first person to say “Every man has his price” might well have been the first person to misquote Horace Walpole (1717-1797), British art historian, author, and politician, who, in reference to a particular group of political enemies, said, “All those men have their price” [emphasis added]. He was expressing not general cynicism but contempt for a particular group of men.

  19. The first person who said “Music has charms to soothe a savage beast” was probably the first person to misquote William Congreve (1670-1729), who said, in his play The Mourning Bride, “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast.”

  20. The philosopher who first said “I think; therefore, I am” was not Descartes (1596-1650), who famously used the assertion of self-knowledge as a fundamental starting point in his rationalist theory of knowledge, but rather St. Augustine (354-430), who advanced knowledge of one’s own existence as a datum that cannot be overturned by those advancing radical skepticism.

  Quiz 5

  Quotations (Part II)

  1. Who first wrote “Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely”?

  2. Please fill in the missing word to complete the phrase Kevin Costner (Ray Kinsella) repeatedly heard in his head in the film Field of Dreams. “If you build it, _____ will come.”

  3. Who originally said or wrote the sentence “We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately”?

  4. Who originally said, in answer to the question why he robbed banks, “Because that’s where the money is”?

  5. Which American originated the expression “the forgotten man”?

  6. Who responded to the question why he wanted to climb Mt. Everest by saying, “Because it is there”?

  7. Who said “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them”?

  8. Who said “A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on”?

  9. Who wrote “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”?

  10. Who originally wrote “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need ”?

  11. Who originated the expression “nattering nabobs of negativism”?

  12. Where will you find the expression “Lead on, Macduff”?

  13. Who wrote the following and other statements extolling self-reliance and laissez-faire economics?• “You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.”

  • “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.”

  • “You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.”

  14. In A Few Good Men, what does Jack Nicholson ask Tom Cruise immediately before Cruise says, “I want the truth”?

  15. In the film The Graduate, what does Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) say to Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft) when he asks whether she is seducing him?

  16. In the 1967 film Cool Hand Luke, the officer called “Captain” (Strother Martin) makes a statement about a lack of communication between Luke (Paul Newman) and him. What exactly does the officer say?

  17. Where did the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty!” originate?

  18. Where did people originally hear the expression “Just the facts ma’am”?

  19. In the 1997 film Titanic, what exactly does Leonardo DiCaprio say about being king of the world?

  20. In Casablanca, at the end of the film Rick (Humphrey Bogart) says what to Louis (Claude Rains)?

  21. Who originally said “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my revolver”?

  Quiz 5 Answers

  Quotations (Part II)

  1. Lord Acton, a nineteenth-century English historian, didn’t write “Power corrupts” but wrote “Power tends to corrupt.”

  2. The voice in Ray Kinsella’s head doesn’t say, “If you build it, they will come,” but “If you build it, he will come.” Although the referent of he was originally the baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson, it later was someone who meant even more to Ray Kinsella—namely, John Kinsella, his father, with whom Ray plays catch during the film’s finale.

  3. Despite the widespread belief that Benjamin Franklin made the remark about hanging together as he signed the Declaration of Independence, no contemporary account attributes the remark to him. According to a popular anecdote, Franklin made the remark in response to a colleague who warned, “We must be unanimous. There must be no pulling different ways; we must all hang together.” If anyone said those remarks during Franklin’s day, it was more likely to have been Richard Penn, William Penn’s grandson, than Benjamin Franklin. After all, the remark was attributed to Penn, the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and a strong supporter of the American Revolution, well into the nineteenth century. What is more, according to Penn family history and Philadelphia lore, Richard Penn, when told by his colleagues, “They must all hang together,” responded, “If you do not, gentlemen, I can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately.” Still further, that version of the statement appeared in an 1830 book and an 1841 press account. So, then, why was Benjamin Franklin credited with the statement? An 1839 joke book and an 1840 biography attributed the statement to Franklin, and since Franklin was a much more colorful and accomplished man than Richard Penn, the story stuck to Franklin.

  4. The quotation did not come from American bank robber Willie Sutton but from a reporter who interviewed Mr. Sutton in prison. The reporter received only a few unexciting, one-word responses, so he invented the phrase to spice up his story.

  5. Although President Franklin D. Roosevelt often used the expression “the forgotten man,” he did not invent it but adopted it from Yale sociologist William Graham Sumner, who, unlike President Roosevelt, advocated laissez-faire economics. Sumner was what has been called a classical liberal (libertarian) who opposed the Spanish-American War and the subsequent U.S. effort to quell the insurgency in the Philippines. He was a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League, which had been formed after the Spanish-American War to oppose annexing territories. Sumner despised businesspeople who relied on government subsidies and contracts. William Graham Sumner’s forgotten man was not a downtrodden person, overlooked by society but was a hard worker who earned
money, only to have it taken from him or her to fund some social scheme.

  6. The person who wanted to climb Mt. Everest “because it is there” was not Sir Edmund Hillary (the first to successfully scale the world’s tallest mountain) but George Herbert Leigh Mallory, who disappeared on his last attempt to scale Everest in 1924 and whose body was found seventy-five years later.

  7. The saying “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them,” comes not from Vladimir Lenin but from the first person to misquote him. No one has produced written documentation of those words from historical records, though Lenin was said to have made the remark to Grigori Zinoviev, a close associate, shortly after a meeting of the Politburo in the early 1920s. The closest scholars can come to the original (mis)quotation is as follows: “They will furnish credits which will serve us for the support of the Communist Party in their countries and, by supplying us materials and technical equipment which we lack, will restore our military industry necessary for our future attacks against our suppliers. To put it in other words, they will work on the preparation of their own suicide.”

  8. The first person who said those words about an oral (spoken) contract was probably the first person to misquote movie producer Sam Goldwyn, who actually said of the famously trustworthy movie executive Joseph M. Schenk, “His verbal contract is worth more than the paper it’s written on.”

  9. Nearly everyone credits the statement about the triumph of evil to Edmund Burke, even though no one can produce any reliable source for that attribution. Attributing the thought to Burke occurred as early as 1950 in the American press. President John F. Kennedy, known for quoting authors, liked to use the quotation and also credited Burke. In its fourteenth edition (1968) Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations attributed the statement to Burke and cited a 1795 letter in which he supposedly wrote it. In 1980, in the preface to Bartlett’s fifteenth edition, the editors admitted that they were incorrect. Despite diligent investigation, no researcher has ever found the origin of those exact words in Burke or anyone else. In short, the original author of those words remains unknown.

  10. The first person to say “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need ” was not Karl Marx but the first person to misquote Marx’s own statements, which were from his Critique of the Gotha Program and not from the Communist Manifesto. Marx was himself paraphrasing a quotation from French historian and politician Louis Blanc, who said: “Let each produce according to his aptitudes and his force; let each consume according to his need.”

  11. Speechwriter and author William Safire invented the phrase “nattering nabobs of negativism,” though Spiro Agnew, President Nixon’s vice president, made those words famous . . . or infamous.

  12. In Macbeth, the quotation isn’t “Lead on Macduff” but “Lay on, Macduff, and damned be him who first cries ‘Hold! Enough!’ ” Macbeth is telling his nemesis Macduff that he intends to fight, not to yield; in other words, Macbeth is challenging Macduff to attack (“lay on”). Macduff kills Macbeth.

  13. Although the individualistic sayings extolling self-reliance have commonly been ascribed to President Lincoln, they weren’t from him. So common is the belief that the sayings came from Lincoln that President Reagan, in a speech he gave at the 1992 Republican convention in Houston, credited the words to Abe. In reality, the words came from the pen of William John Henry Boetcker (1873-1962), a German-born American minister and motivational speaker. An outspoken political conservative, the Reverend Boetcker is remembered for his pamphlet “The Ten Carrots.” Originally published in 1916, “The Ten Carrots” came to be ascribed to Lincoln in 1942, when Boetcker’s maxims and some Lincoln material were printed on a leaflet by a conservative political organization called the Committee for Constitutional Government. Although Boetcker’s maxims were on the opposite side of the Lincoln material, some people, knowingly or unknowingly, came to ascribe all the material to Lincoln. Eventually, increasing numbers of people came to believe that Lincoln had written “The Ten Carrots.” The leaflet bore the title “Lincoln on Limitations,” though Boetcker’s name was printed on the side presenting “The Ten Carrots.” There are several minor variants of the pamphlet in circulation, but the most popular version is as follows:• You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.

  • You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.

  • You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.

  • You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.

  • You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.

  • You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.

  • You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.

  • You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.

  • You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.

  • And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

  14. Nicholson, in A Few Good Men, doesn’t say, “You want the truth?” Instead, he says, “You want answers?” Then Cruise says, “I want the truth!” Whereupon Nicholson shouts, “You can’t handle the truth!”

  15. Contrary to popular opinion, Benjamin does not say, “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” Instead, he actually says, “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me. Aren’t you?”

  16. Contrary to popular opinion, the officer doesn’t say, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” Instead, he actually says, “What we’ve got here is [pause] failure to communicate.”

  17. Although the phrase “Beam me up, Scotty!” is a catchphrase indissolubly linked with the TV series Star Trek, it was never uttered in any Star Trek TV episode or movie. One can, however, find similar expressions. For example, in the 1986 movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Captain Kirk says, “Beam me up, Mr. Scott.” Kirk also says, “Scotty, beam us up” in “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” a second-season episode from the original series first broadcast on January 5, 1968. Further, Kirk says, “Beam us up, Scotty” in Star Trek: The Animated Series in the episodes “The Lorelei Signal” and “The Infinite Vulcan.” Finally, in the 1994 movie Star Trek Generations, Kirk says, “Beam them out of there, Scotty.” The complete phrase was eventually uttered by William Shatner not in a movie or TV series but in the audio adaptation of his novel Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden. Later, the actor who played Scotty, James Doohan, chose the phrase as the title of his autobiography.

  18. Although “Just the facts, ma’am” came to be known as the catchphrase for TV’s Dragnet, it was never uttered by Joe Friday on the show. The closest Friday (Jack Webb) came to the phrase occurred when he said, “All we want are the facts, ma’am” and “All we know are the facts, ma’am.” There was, however, a short audio satire released on September 21, 1953, as a 45-rpm single called “St. George and the Dragonet” that did use the famous phrase. The script was written by Stan Freberg and Daws Butler (the voice of Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound).

  19. Leonardo DiCaprio says, “I’m the king of the world,” not “I’m king of the world.”

  20. Rick (Bogart) doesn’t say, “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” or “I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship.” Instead, he actually says, “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”

  21. Although the statement about reaching for a revolver is uncivilized enough to have come from Nazi Hermann Goering, to whom it is usually attributed, a version of it actually comes from playwright Hanns Johst’s drama Schlageter, an expression of Nazi ideology performed on Hitler’s birthday to celebrate his appointment to chancellor. The play was a heroic biography of the proto-Nazi martyr Albert Leo Schlageter. It was produced at the State Playhouse in Berlin in 1933, the year Hitler came to power. The original line, in English, would be: “When I hear of culture / hear the word ‘culture’ . . . I relea
se the safety catch of my Browning!” (Act 1, Scene 1). In German: “Wenn ich Kultur höre . . . entsichere ich meinen Browning!” The line is spoken by another character talking with the young Schlageter.

  Quiz 6

  Geography

  1. Where was the first European settlement in New England?

  2. What is Big Ben in London?

  3. What is Florida’s westernmost key?

  4. What is the easternmost state in the United States?

  5. If you were in the United States and dug a hole until you ended up on the other side of the world, where would you be?

  6. How many directions are there at the North Pole?

  7. Where is Scotland Yard?

  8. New York ’s East River is technically what sort of body of water?

  9. What is the largest desert?

  10. Of Nevada and Illinois, which state is west of the Mississippi River?

  11. Where is Yellowstone Park?

  12. What part of the world today would be equivalent to ancient Gaul?

  13. In what continent is Moscow?

  14. Excluding cities in Alaska, which U.S. city is the largest in area?

  15. Which is farther west, Reno, Nevada, or Los Angeles, California?

  16. If you head due south from Detroit, Michigan, what will be the first foreign country you enter?

  17. What is the official name of America’s state that is the smallest in area?

  18. Which is the largest lake completely in Canada?

  19. Traditionally, a British hamlet was distinguished from other villages by what feature?

  20. Which is the world ’s largest lake?

  21. What is the world ’s longest railroad tunnel?

  22. The island of Elba, to which Napoleon I was banished in 1814, lies off the coast of Italy in what sea?