"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle" (UNCLASSIFIED)

[Shapiro, Fred]

I think The Yale Book of Quotations has already nailed that one down.

Fred Shapiro



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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Gregory McNamee [gm at GREGORYMCNAMEE.COM]
Sent: Thursday, September 09, 2010 9:59 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: "A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle"              (UNCLASSIFIED)

This is not an authoritative source, but it gets at something that had been tugging at my memory:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2516475/a_fish_without_a_bicycle.html?cat=9

When I was at university (1975-78) I spent a lot of time hanging around with philosophy majors (I was a classics major myself), and somewhere in that mix I encountered the phrase "Man without God is like fish without bicycle," with its faux-Mao Red Book syntax. The article linked to supports the thought that that's the original form, though it needs further nailing down.

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