"A woman without a man" proverb

[Baker, John]

        The identity of the ungodly philosopher seems lost to, if not history, then at least Google.  Here's the most detailed online account, from http://archives.emazing.com/archives/womanday/2001-06-21:

        >>In 1970, Irina Dunn was an Honors English student at the University of Sydney. In one of her favorite classes there, "From the 1870s to the 1920s," taught by Professor Catherine Runcie, Dunn read: "Man needs God (or religion) like a fish needs a bicycle." <<

        Or perhaps not.  Here's a rival account, from http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/unknown.htm:

        >>Man needs God like a fish needs a bicycle.
-- Men's-room graffito in a Berkeley, California bar during the late 1960s, quoted by Robert Anton Wilson in Cosmic Trigger. This was later bastardized by feminists to read: "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" or something along those lines.<<

John Baker


-----Original Message-----
From: Mary Jane [mailto:missmj at SWITCHB.COM]
Sent: Monday, April 28, 2003 12:44 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "A woman without a man" proverb


a philosophical text
> I was reading for my Honours year in English Literature
> and Language in 1970. It was "A man needs God like a
> fish needs a bicycle".

[a question is begging....]