I am what I am ....

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sat Apr 24 01:21:20 UTC 2010


At 5:45 PM -0400 4/23/10, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>The Langston Hughes example given by Jim Parish, "America never was
>America to me," evinces a potential class of anti-tautophrases.
>
>I am not what I am. (Othello by William Shakespeare. Safire mentions this.)
>
>It is not what it is. (In GB: "Being other than itself, it is not what
>it is." in Writing and Difference by Jacques Derrida.)
>
>When it's over, it's not over (In GB: The Divine Drama by Kurt D. Bruner.)
>
>We hadn't let Reagan be Reagan. (In GB: A Different Drummer by Michael
>K. Deaver.)
>
>Nothing succeeds like failure. (In GB: The Innovation Paradox: The
>Success of Failure, the Failure of Success by Richard Evans Farson,
>Ralph Keyes.)
>

She knows there's no success like failure
And failure's no success at all

--Robert Zimmerman

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