"There's an old saying..."

[Dan Goncharoff]

Thank you, Garson!

I have to ask if it is surprising that a shorthand version of
something originally written in a foreign language 132 years ago and
still studied at West Point has been described as an old saying in the
Army?

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 1, 2012, at 9:02 PM, Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: "There's an old saying..."
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Dan Goncharoff wrote
>> Didn't Moltke, der Grosse Schweiger, say this (in German)?
>> "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy".
>
> The Yale Book of Quotations provides the following translation:
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Helmuth von Moltke
> Prussian military leader, 1800�1891
>
> No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first
> encounter with the enemy�s main force.
> Kriegsgeschichtliche Einzelschriften (1880)
> [End excerpt]
>
> Here is a cite showing a translation into English in 1891 of an
> extended version of the quotation.
>
> Cite: 1891 January, Journal of the Royal United Service Institution
> (Great Britain) Volume 35, Number 155, Cruizer-War and Coast Defence
> by Commander H. Garbett, [Translated by  permission from the
> "Mittheilungen aus dem Gebiete des Seewesens"] Start Page 47, Quote
> Page 47, Published by Harrison and Sons, London. (Google Books full
> view)
>
> http://books.google.com/books?id=bsJMAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Moltke+very%22#v=snippet&
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Field-Marshal Moltke very rightly lays down in the volume issued by
> the General Staff on the Franco-German War, that no plan of operations
> can reach with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the
> enemy's main force, and that only uninitiated civilians believe they
> can see in the progress of a campaign the prearranged execution of an
> original plan, all the details of which have been previously settled
> and carried out to the end.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 11:13 AM, Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at gmail.com> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Dan Goncharoff <thegonch at GMAIL.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: "There's an old saying..."
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Didn't Moltke, der Grosse Schweiger, say this (in German)?
>>
>> "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy".
>>
>> DanG
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Sep 1, 2012 at 10:08 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
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>>> -----------------------
>>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
>>> Subject:      "There's an old saying..."
>>>
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> Maybe everyone already knows this but me (Charlie and Garson in
>>> particular), but people seem to say "There's an old saying...." when what
>>> they mean is something like, "I heard somebody say this, or something very
>>> much like it, on one occasion, and it stuck in my mind because it's so
>>> clever or succinct."
>>>
>>> Seeming exmple from CNN the other day: "There's an old saying in the Army:
>>> 'The first thing to go bad is the plan.'"
>>>
>>> Sound like a genuine proverb, right?  However, a Google search yields
>>> nothing. Of course, I may have overlooked some slight variant that would
>>> get 10,000 hits, but the principle still seems sound: for most people, it
>>> only takes one utterance plus a good memory to turn a catchy generalization
>>> an "old saying."
>>>
>>> JL
>>>
>>> --
>>> "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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