[Ads-l] Never complain, never explain.

[Shapiro, Fred]

The ever-helpful New Yale Book of Quotations traces "Never complain and never explain" to a 1903 source.

Fred Shapiro



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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
Sent: Monday, October 3, 2022 9:53 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Subject: Never complain, never explain.

A cursory Google Search doesn't indicate to me that Garson's investigated
this increasingly common proverb. (Apologies if I've overlooked something.)
Here it's attributed - at fourth hand - to William H. Seward. The immediate
attribution is to   William Howard Taft, who is said to have heard the
anecdote from his father.

1910 _Morning Oregonian_ (Portland, Ore.) (Nov. 27) 4: Seward answered:
'Early in my political life I made it a rule never to reply to personal
criticism, never to defend myself from political attack. That rule I have
followed faithfully. I never complain, and I never explain, and I feel that
my adherence to this rule has made me what I am." ... "Never complain;
never explain" has been Mr. Taft's personal rule of conduct ever since he
became a public servant.

And Lieutenant Colonel John Baynes of the British Army recalled hat it was
in common use during the Great War:

1967 J. Baynes _Morale_ (London: Cassell, 1967) 191: Officers and men in
those days used the expression, in respect of earning the displeasure of
their seniors, "never complain; never explain." The Scottish soldier stuck
to this, and in nine cases out of ten accepted his punishment without a
word.

In the first case, the advice is not to lower oneself by replying to
carping critics. In the second, it's a defense against a superior's ire.

Nowadays, my impression is that it's most often recommended as a way of
maintaining the look of authority while keeping other people in the dark.
It certainly seemed that way when I heard it in the '90s.

Earlier exx. may be findable.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth.

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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