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

[Garson O'Toole]

 Jonathan Lighter wrote
> 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."

The YBQ Le Carre quotation is excellent. Bill Mullins discovery I
think is key, but the same cite was found by another searcher earlier.
I was planning to write on this topic soon. Here is part of the draft:

Quote Investigator: A few years ago the noted science fiction author
William Gibson also expressed an interest in identifying the origin of
this phrase. It can be traced back to a sentence in a column in the
Washington Times newspaper written by the film critic and essayist
Richard Grenier in 1993 [WTG]:

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.

This citation was mentioned in a forum post at the website of Gibson
by an individual using the handle Caplewood who suggested that
"Grenier made it up" [CWG].

It is important to note that Grenier did not use quotation marks
around the statement of the view that he ascribed to Orwell. QI agrees
with Caplewood and hypothesizes that Grenier was using his own words
to present a summary of Orwell’s viewpoint. Later commentators placed
the statement into quotation marks and introduced various
modifications to the passage.

Pervious researchers have located phrases in the works of Orwell that
contain parts of the idea expressed in the aphorism under
investigation. Here are selected citations in chronological order. ...

>
> (On Mon, Sep 20, 2010 at 2:27 PM, Mullins, Bill AMRDEC <
> Bill.Mullins at us.army.mil> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> 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
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
>
>
> --
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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>

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