Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p.173
“Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?'
Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?”
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Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that…" by Frank Zappa?
Frank Zappa129
American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and fil… 1940–1993Related quotes
“Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway!”
Matka Tereza (1910–1997) Roman Catholic saint of Albanian origin
“How many legs does a dog have, if you call a tail a leg?”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
His collected works contain no riddle about dog legs, but George W. Julian recounts Lincoln using a similar story about a calf in Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by distinguished men of his time (1909), p. 241: "There are strong reasons for saying that he doubted his right to emancipate under the war power, and he doubtless meant what he said when he compared an Executive order to that effect to 'the Pope’s Bull against the comet.' In discussing the question, he used to liken the case to that of the boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called its tail a leg, replied, 'Five,' to which the prompt response was made that calling the tail a leg would not make it a leg."
A very similar riddle about cow legs was also circulated by Edward Josiah Stearns' Notes on Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), p. 46: '"Father," said one of the rising generation to his paternal progenitor, "if I should call this cow's tail a leg, how many legs would she have?" "Why five, to be sure." "Why, no, father; would calling it a leg make it one?"'
Misattributed
Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel
Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564), Gargantua (1534), Chapter 50 : Gargantua's speech to the vanquished.
Context: Time, which gnaws and diminisheth all things else, augments and increaseth benefits; because a noble action of liberality, done to a man of reason, doth grow continually by his generous thinking of it and remembering it.
Being unwilling therefore any way to degenerate from the hereditary mildness and clemency of my parents, I do now forgive you, deliver you from all fines and imprisonments, fully release you, set you at liberty, and every way make you as frank and free as ever you were before.
“What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.”
Quid enim refert, quantum habeas? multo illud plus est, quod non habes.
Marcus Annaeus Seneca (-54–39 BC) Roman scholar
Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, bk. 12, ch. 2, sect. 13; translation from Riad Aziz Kassis The Book of Proverbs and Arabic Proverbial Works (Leiden: Brill, 1999) p. 159.
Misattributed
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)
Private comment, as quoted in Name-Dropping (1999) by John Kenneth Galbraith, p. 149.
Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet
explaining his way of imagination
Karel Appel defines his painting', interview 1968
“Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey.”
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
In a debate with religious leaders in Kansas City, as quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)
Context: Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul.