On September 22, 1776, during the Revolutionary War, a former school teacher named Nathan Hale was hanged by the British for being a rebel spy. According to legend, Hale uttered…
Year: 2025
“Live fast, die young and have [or leave] a good-looking corpse!”
The saying “Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse!” is often associated with actor James Dean. Dean didn’t say it as a line in any of his own…
Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable…
Every once in a while, I like to do a “guest post” here, using something I previously posted on my other quotation blog, QuoteCounterquote.com. I recently heard some news commentator…
“Any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be all bad.”
To paraphrase Firesign Theatre, everything most people know about some famous quotations is wrong. A notable example is the famous line “Any man who hates dogs and babies can’t be…
How a political backlash turned “a grand old rag” into “a Grand Old Flag”…
On January 19, 1906, American composer, playwright and performer George M. Cohan copyrighted a new song he’d written titled “You’re a Grand Old Rag.” It was one of the songs…
Origins of the terms “massive retaliation” and “brinkmanship”…
A while back I noticed a news story that said: “North Korean missile tests signal return to brinkmanship.” It made me decide to look up the origin of that term.…