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

[victor steinbok]

Garson's message ended abruptly, so I am not sure where he was going
with this. Still, it's worth taking a quick look at Wiki List of
Misquotations (if you want to see it formatted properly, go to
Wikipedia):


"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men
stand ready to do violence on their behalf."
Alternative: "We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready
to visit violence on those who would harm us."
In his 1945 "Notes on Nationalism", Orwell claimed that the statement,
"Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are
committing violence on their behalf" was a "grossly obvious" fact.
"Notes on Nationalism"
Notes: allegedly said by George Orwell although there is no evidence
that Orwell ever wrote or uttered either of these versions of this
idea. They do bear some similarity to comments made in an essay that
Orwell wrote on Rudyard Kipling, when quoting from one of his poems.
Orwell did write, in his essay on Kipling, that the latter's "grasp of
function, of who protects whom, is very sound. He sees clearly that
men can only be highly civilized while other men, inevitably less
civilized, are there to guard and feed them." (1942)
"Yes, making mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleep" -
Rudyard Kipling (Tommy)
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a
man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I
provide, then questions the manner in which I provide it." - Aaron
Sorkin (A Few Good Men)
Alternative: "We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand
ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." -
Winston Churchill (miscellaneous quotation, no date)

VS-)

On Tue, Mar 29, 2011 at 5:57 PM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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. ...

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