Proverbial Parachutes

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 12:36 AM, George Thompson
<george.thompson at nyu.edu> wrote:
>
> “You pull the ripcord on the parachute you packed,” he said. “Not the
> parachute you wish you had packed.”
> NY Times, June 15, 2010, section A, p. 16, col. 5 (continuation of first
> page story "Efforts to Repel Gulf Spill Are Described as Chaotic")

Very nice snowcloning of the original, which is of course Donald
Rumsfeld's "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you
might want or wish to have at a later time," generalized to "You X the
Y you Z-ed, not the Y you wish you Z-ed."


--Ben Zimmer

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