“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn't work if it is not open.”
Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer
“Minds are like parachutes: they only function when open.”
Quoted in Giovanni Graziadei, Gestione della produzione industriale, Hoepli, Milano, 2004, p. 65 http://books.google.it/books?id=xomdPzmzKAcC&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false. ISBN 88-203-3395-3. May be a bit questionable http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php/new_york_city/entry/minds_are_like_parachutes_they_only_function_when_open/.
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Thomas Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar2
Scottish Distiller and Conservative Party politician 1864–1930Related quotes
“The mind is like an umbrella - it functions best when open.”
Walter Gropius (1883–1969) German architect (1883-1969) and founder of the Bauhaus School
As quoted in The Art of Looking Sideways by w:Alan Fletcher, p. 129
“Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.”
Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist
Anathemas and Admirations (1987)
G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist
Original quote:
For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever.
The Extraordinary Cabman, one of many essays collected in Tremendous Trifles (1909)
Misattributed
James Wesley Rawles (1960) Survivalist-fiction author and blogger
Source: Tools For Survival (2009), p. 188
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher
The Problem of Peace (1954)
“Parachuting has taught us to be strong, and only those are needed by our country”
Stanisław Sosabowski (1892–1967) Polish general
Stanisław Sosabowski (1957) Najkrótszą drogą (Through the shortest way) London : Committe of Polish Parachutists.
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
Discours d'ouverture, congrès de la paix http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Congr%C3%A8s_de_la_Paix_1849, [Opening address, Peace Congress], Paris (21 August 1849); published in Actes et paroles - Avant l'exil (1875) <br class="br">Context: A day will come when there will be no battlefields, but markets opening to commerce and minds opening to ideas. A day will come when the bullets and bombs are replaced by votes, by universal suffrage, by the venerable arbitration of a great supreme senate which will be to Europe what Parliament is to England, the Diet to Germany, and the Legislative Assembly to France.<br>A day will come when a cannon will be a museum-piece, as instruments of torture are today. And we will be amazed to think that these things once existed!<br>A day will come when we shall see those two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, facing one another, stretching out their hands across the sea, exchanging their products, their arts, their works of genius, clearing up the globe, making deserts fruitful, ameliorating creation under the eyes of the Creator, and joining together, to reap the well-being of all, these two infinite forces, the fraternity of men and the power of God.
“Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump: you have to get it right the first time.”
Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist
As quoted in Margaret Mead, World's Grandmother (1975) by Ann Morse, Charles Morse, Harold Henriksen, p. 9
1970s