[Ads-l] old, not bold

[Charles C Doyle]

Some more instances--from a forthcoming supplement to the Dictionary of Modern Proverbs.  (As not infrequently happens, I've gotten scooped by Garson and Barry!)



There are old pilots and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.

1934  “Aviation Medicine” (unsigned editorial), New York State Journal of Medicine 34: 511: “There are old pilots, he [Ralph Greene] adds, and there have been bold pilots, but there are no old and bold pilots, for the bold ones have been killed.”  1939  June Aulick, “Stand by for Howie Wing!” Popular Aviation 24, no. 5 (May) 45: “Bill Moore says, ‘I want to be the kind of pilot who makes a perfect landing, steps from the cockpit, and then trips over his long gray beard.’ Says Harry Copland, ‘There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots.’”  1945  Leatherneck [Quantico VA] 28, no. 10 (Oct.) 38:  “‘We get plenty of rough flying just on regular runs,’ Lieut. [Anthony] Roscoe said. And then he added, ‘There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but I’ve never met any old bold pilots.’”    1988  Chicago Tribune, 26 Jun.: “. . . Joe Kittinger is a dead man. The timeless Air Force maxim, ‘There are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots,’ guarantees it.”  1995  Independent [London], 4 Apr.: “As they say, ‘There are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots.’”  1998  Dominion [Wellington, New Zealand], 15 Jan.: “He [Doug Lord] attributes his accident-free record to ‘just being careful.’ And recalls an old pilots’ saying: ‘There are plenty of old pilots and plenty of bold pilots, but no old and bold pilots.’”  1998  Yakima [WA] Herald-Republic, 23 Nov.: “. . . [H]e always followed the old adage that there are bold pilots and old pilots, but no old, bold pilots.”




________________________________
From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Sunday, December 2, 2018 9:10:16 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: old, not bold

My hat is off to Barry, as it often is, and his access to the Boston Herald.

The newspaper databases I've seen show the quote (in the "pilot" form)
appearing in papers frequently after the end of WWII.

JL

On Sun, Dec 2, 2018 at 5:22 AM ADSGarson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Interesting saying, JL.
>
> [Begin excerpt from Barry Popik's website]
> "There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there are no old,
> bold pilots” is an old aviation adage. Harry Copland (1896-1976), who
> first flew in an airplane in 1911, made the saying famous. The Boston
> (MA) Herald briefly profiled Copland on June 10, 1934:
>
> “Given to sage remarks, Copland’s statement, ‘There are old pilots and
> there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots,’ has become
> famous throughout the land.”
> [End excerpt from Barry Popik's website]
>
>
> https://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/there_are_old_pilots_and_bold_pilots_but_there_are_no_old_bold_pilots/
> On Sat, Dec 1, 2018 at 8:32 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > According to the current film _A Private War_, “There are old
> journalists,
> > and there are bold journalists, but there are no old, bold journalists.”
> >
> > 1943 Kendall Banning _Our Army Today_ (N.Y.: Funk & Wagnalls) 152: "There
> > are old pilots, and there are bold pilots, but there are no old, bold
> > pilots."
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> 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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