paranoid

[victor steinbok]

Just to preclude anyone else wasting time on these:

The "abuse" line is either exact or a variation on a line from
Ghostbusters--the timing is almost exactly right. The "experience" quip is a
variation of Oscar Wilde's line from Lady WIndermere's Fan. The "opinion"
line is listed as "Unsourced" in Wikiquote. But I found at least one source
(1990, but with an earlier 1980 edition) that lists it as a "Goldwynism" (
http://goo.gl/1YEXo ). Another attribution to Goldwyn is from 1958 (
http://goo.gl/IEzHc -- the date seems accurate, but the inclusion cannot be
verified). It also pops up in "Another Book of Clean Jokes" (1983--that
might explain the poster, or they have common origin). It pops up a couple
of times in the 1970 (1974 and 1979 for sure) and a variant in in 1977 Time
("If I want your opinion, I'll beat it out of you.").

VS-)

On Mon, May 16, 2011 at 2:43 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>wrote:

> ...
>
(Yet another button that I had acquired while at MIT, but one that has since
> been lost. I might as well admit to another button that I got in 1985: "I
> don't have to take this abuse from you--I have hundreds of people waiting to
> abuse me!" which sounds distinctly Dorothy-Parkeresque. I also had acquired
> two posters in the spring of 1984 that read, "Experience is the name we give
> to our mistakes" and "If I want your opinion, I'll give it to you". All of
> these were tied to specific events, which is why I have the dates narrowed
> down. The buttons were distributed by MITSFITs and the posters were
> purchased from The Coop and still bear the original price stickers on the
> back.)
>

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org