[Ads-l] QOTY

ADSGarson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Wed May 13 01:17:23 UTC 2020


Way back in September 2011 there was a thread on the following saying:
Your Liberty To Swing Your Fist Ends Just Where My Nose Begins

http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2011-September/112911.html

JL found some great citations, and I eventually created a Quote
Investigator article:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/15/liberty-fist-nose/

In the earliest citations prohibitionists were asserting that the
existence of a bar serving patrons alcohol within their neighborhood
or town was infringing on their rights. The existence of the bar was
according to prohibitionists analogous to a direct physical assault.

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 8:25 PM Stanton McCandlish
<smccandlish at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Cf. also this Benjamin Franklin quotation, of which the new phrase is kind
> of a compression, *modulo* the nose phrase: "Those who would give up
> essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither
> Liberty nor Safety."
>
> That said, Franklin didn't actually mean what people today think he did.
> There some analysis of this here:
>
> https://techcrunch.com/2014/02/14/how-the-world-butchered-benjamin-franklins-quote-on-liberty-vs-security/
> https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famous-liberty-safety-quote-lost-its-context-in-21st-century
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/11/11/liberty-safety-and-benjamin-franklin/
>
> I'm reminded a bit of the situation of Emerson's "A foolish consistency is
> the hobgoblin of little minds", which also did not mean what 99% of people
> think it did.  I wrote up something about that for the Wikipedia-editing
> context, a few years ago:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/WP:EMERSON
>
>
>
> On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 2:47 PM Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > "My rights don't end where your fear begins."
> >
> > A slogan of pandemic protesters. Sometimes "God-given" modifies "rights."
> >
> > Earliest?: April 5, 2020, at www.neogaf.com>Discussions>Off-Topic
> > <http://www.neogaf.com › Discussions › Off-Topic Discussion>
> >
> > Cf. "Your rights end where my nose begins."
> >
> > JL
> >
> > --
> > "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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



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