"Rough men stand ready . . ." (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Jonathan Lighter]

FWIW, a GB search for "men stand/are ready" + night + sleep" turns up
nothing of interest before the full-blown quotation is attributed to Orwell
in 1998 - five years later than Bill's earliest ex.

The quote sounds like somebody's reconstructed, dim  recollection of a line
from novelist John le Carre's _The Spy who Came in from the Cold_ (1963) in
YBQ:

"We do disagreeable things so that ordinary people here and elsewhere can
sleep safely in their beds at night. Of course, we occasionally do very
wicked things."

JL


(On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill AMRDEC" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      "Rough men stand ready . .  ." (UNCLASSIFIED)
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
>
> I'm away from my copy, so forgive me if YBQ has already covered this (I
> don't see it in the ADS-L archives).
>
>
> "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men
> stand ready to do violence on their behalf." I've seen this (and close
> variants) attributed to George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling.  Wikipedia
> has a short investigation here:
> http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations
>
>
> _The Washington Times_ April 6, 1993 p F3 col unk (Newsbank)
> "As George Orwell pointed out, people sleep peacefully in their beds at
> night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their
> behalf."
>
> Chicago IL _Daily Herald_ 11/23/1998 p 17 col 5. (narchive)
> "Remember George Orwell's unminced words: "We sleep safely in our beds
> because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those
> who would do us harm." (from a syndicated George Will column).
>
> Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
> Caveats: NONE
>
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