paranoid

[Garson O'Toole]

Back in May Victor Steinbok initiated a thread about the following
quotation (in its myriad manifestations):

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.

I was finally able to check a Google Books snippet citation in Esquire
magazine on microfilm. The GB database did not specify a month and the
page number given was inaccurate. This is the earliest cite I have
located that attributed a variant of the remark to the poet Delmore
Schwartz.

Cite: 1968 March, Esquire, Politics by Dwight Macdonald, Start Page
14, Quote Page 16, Volume 69, Number 3, Esquire Inc., Chicago,
Illinois. (Verified on microfilm)

But that McCarthy is in cahoots with Johnson on Vietnam would bother
me if I could believe it, which I can't, too baroque for my set of
mind. Granted that, as Delmore Schwartz remarked when someone accused
him, justly, of paranoia, "Even paranoiacs have some real enemies."

There are some cites with earlier dates in the list archives. For
example, in July 1967 the existence of a button with the expression
"Even Paranoids Have Real Enemies" was noted in the magazine
Christianity Today. YBQ recorded a 1933 precursor from the pen of
Dorothy L. Sayers "Because a person has monomania she need not be
wrong about her facts." Victor gave citations to various publications
including one that quoted Kissinger.

Garson

On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 10:47 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       victor steinbok <aardvark66 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      paranoid
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I am having a moment of doubt--the line is clearly in the movie version of
> Catch-22 (1970):
>
> Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you.
>
>
> But is it in the book (1961, but written over about 8 years)? Because, if it
> isn't...
>
> Well, just search around--it's credited to everyone from ACLU to Abbie
> Hoffman. One credit I did not find: Joseph Heller.
>
> Oh, and BTW, Rahm Emanuel stole a similar line from Kissinger: Even a
> paranoid (or "paranoids") can have enemies (or "has real enemies").
>
> VS-)
>
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