Remarks at Republican National Committee Breakfast (31 January 1958) http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=11229; Eisenhower hear delivers his particular variation of a pre-existing proverb, which has since become widely dispersed as simply "It's not the size of the dog in the fight; it's the size of the fight in the dog." In that form it has become widely attributed to Mark Twain on the internet, as early as 1998, but no contemporary evidence of Twain ever using it has been located. The earliest known variants of it occur in 1911, one in a collection of sayings "Stub Ends of Thoughts" by Arthur G. Lewis, in Book of the Royal Blue Vol. 14, No. 7 (April 1911): "It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that matters", as cited in The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, edited by Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder, and Fred R. Shapiro, p. 232, and the other as "It is not the size of the dog in the fight that counts, but the fight in the dog that wins" in the evening edition of the East Oregonian (20 April 1911) http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ads-l/2015-October/139250.html
1950s
“"It's not size that counts in an army, but skill. It's not prowess that counts in a General, but finesse."”
Statement from Cao Cao to his advisors before he face Yuan Shao in the Battle of Guandu Source: Romance of the Three Kingdoms. An adaptation of the Sanguo Zhi new 2010.
Attributed
Original
「兵不在多在精,将不在猛在某」
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Cao Cao 6
Chinese warlord during the Eastern Han Dynasty 155–220Related quotes
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”
From William Bruce Cameron's Informal Sociology: A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking (1963), p. 13. The comment is part of a longer paragraph and does not appear in quotations in Cameron's book, and other sources http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22not%20everything%20that%20can%20be%20counted%20counts%22%20cameron&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbo=u&tbs=bks:1&source=og&sa=N&tab=wp such as The Student's Companion to Sociology (p. 92) http://books.google.com/books?id=KMsB1GE8dBEC&lpg=PA92&dq=%22Not%20everything%20that%20can%20be%20counted%20counts%22&pg=PA92#v=onepage&q=%22Not%20everything%20that%20can%20be%20counted%20counts%22&f=false attribute the quote to Cameron. A number of recent books http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&tbo=p&tbs=bks:1&q=%22not+everything+that+can+be+counted%22+einstein+princeton&start=0&sa=N claim that Einstein had a sign with these words in his office in Princeton, but until a reliable historical source can be found to support this, skepticism is warranted. The earliest source on Google Books that mentions the quote in association with Einstein and Princeton is Charles A. Garfield's 1986 book Peak Performers: The New Heroes of American Business, in which he wrote on p. 156:
: Albert Einstein liked to underscore the micro/macro partnership with a remark from Sir George Pickering that he chalked on the blackboard in his office at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton: "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."
Misattributed
“Counting is the religion of this generation it is its hope and its salvation.”
Source: Everybody’s Autobiography (1937), Ch. 3
Herbert N. Casson cited in: Alfred Armand Montapert (1964) Distilled Wisdom. p. 68
1950s and later
“Many of the things you can count, don't count. Many of the things you can't count, really count.”
Testimony before the House Interior Committee (5 February 1981)
1980s
“Don’t count, feel! The only count I know, is Count Basie!”
when asked about her preference for six-count or eight-count in Lindy Hop http://www.it-must-schwing.de/wir-ueber-uns
Letter to George Washington (August 1778)