Quotations and Literature Forum

Many people do not realize that this came from (or was inspired by) Kahlil Gibran. When I discovered this, I began to wonder: what other famous quotes are attributed to people who actually got the quote from somewhere else?

_________________
"Si Dieu n'existait pas, il faudrait
l'inventer."

- Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet)

"It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

-Robert E. Lee at the Battle of Fredericksburg, 13 Dec, 1862

Welcome to the Quotations Page forums.
If you do a little bit more research you will find that Mr. Gibran was not the originator of this concept. It reminds me of a quote that I thought I had originated, but I later found that others had expressed it (which fits!)...
There is no longer such a thing as original thought. There are only variations on a theme.

The person on this webpage is rather excited about spreading the news that Gibran originated the line, but it would appear that Holmes has it.

"Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country?"
("The New Frontier" by Gibran)
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/ ... ibute.html
In an 1884 speech, Oliver Wendell Holmes said: "recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return."
Warren Harding in 1916 at the Republican convention echoed a similar statement: "we must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation." That line is on display in Harding's own handwriting at his Marion, Ohio home.
Kennedy speechwriter Arthur Schlesinger admitted that the line had antecedents but he said that the thought was Kennedy's own when Kennedy recorded a quotation from Rousseau in 1945: As soon as any man says of the affairs of state, What does it matter to me? the state may be given up as lost.

Theno, which Holmes gave the speech in 1884?

Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes 1809 - 1894 Writer and physician or
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr 1841 - 1935 Associate Justice of the Supreme Court

Henry

The Associate Justice.

Nice Call Theno'! We better get some trivia going so we can all dust off the old brain and get it going again!

_________________
Thou, who canst guide the wandering star
Who calm’st the elemental war
Whose mantle is yon boundless sky
My thoughts, my words, my crimes forgive
And since I soon must cease to live
Instruct me how to die.~Lord Byron
Rogue insomniac

Holmes, Oliver Wendell (1809 - 1894) had a view on original thought too.
A thought is often original, though you have uttered it a hundred times.
The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, Ch. 1, 1857

Henry

. . . ask what your country can do TO you.