"Time Is What Keeps Everything from Happening at Once"

[Wilson Gray]

Fred, try looking at this:

<http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue22/atom6.html>

It's from a reprint, obviously, but it does contain that phrase, plus
the notation, "copyright 1919, Ray Cummings," at the bottom of the
page. The page itself is quite long, so doing a Find will save you
some time.

Hope this helps!
-Wilson

On 11/12/06, Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Fred Shapiro <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      "Time Is What Keeps Everything from Happening at Once"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> In The Yale Book of Quotations I have the following quote:
>
> Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
>         Ray Cummings, "The Time Professor" (1921)
>
> A purchaser of the YBQ has written to me to say that "The line is in Cummings'
> most famous story, 'The Girl in the Golden Atom', which was originally
> published in All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1919."  His source is The Giant
> Anthology of Science Fiction, edited by Leo Margulies and Oscar J. Friend,
> Merlin Press, Inc., New York, 1954. The quotation is from Chapter V, "The World
> in the Ring", on p. 148 of his copy. Here is the quotation, with some context:
>
> "To get a conception of this change you must analyze definitely what time is.
> We measure and mark it by years, months, and so forth, down to minutes and
> seconds, all based upon the movements of our earth around its sun. But that is
> the measurement of time, not time itself. How would you describe time?"
>
> The Big Business Man smiled. "Time," he said, "is what keeps everything from
> happening at once."
>
> "Very clever," laughed the Chemist.
>
> Is anyone able to verify whether the same passage appears in the original
> magazine publication?
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>


--
Everybody says, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange
complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is knows how deep
a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our
race. He brought death into the world.

--Sam Clemens

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