“The farmers may be the backbone of the country, but who wants to be a backbone?”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter
"Mr. Icky"
Quoted, Tales of the Jazz Age (1922)
“I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.”
Source: Death Before Bedtime
Last update June 3, 2021. History
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Gore Vidal163
American writer 1925–2012Related quotes
“Strange that creatures without backbones have the hardest shells.”
Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer
Sand and Foam (1926)
Dave Ramsey (1960) American financial advisor
Source: The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness
“At breaking the backbone on the people's rights.”
Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet
Lunatic. 6
पागल (The Lunatic)
Context: I see the blind man as the people's guide, the ascetic in his cave a deserter; those who act in the theater of lies I see as dark buffoons. Those who fail I find successful, and progress only backsliding. am I squint-eyed, Or just crazy? Friend, I'm crazy. Look at the withered tongues of shameless leaders, The dance of the whores At breaking the backbone on the people's rights. When the sparrow-headed newsprint spreads its black lies In a web of falsehood
“He was a tool of the boss, without brains or backbone.”
Franz Kafka book The Metamorphosis
Source: The Metamorphosis
Anchee Min (1957) Chinese-American author
Source: On the way she pays homage to China in “Anchee Min: 'If I had stayed in China, I would be dead'” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/10116718/Anchee-Min-If-I-had-stayed-in-China-I-would-be-dead.html in The Telegraph (2013 Jul 4)
“Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.”
Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love
This derives from a folk proverb sometimes attributed to Clementine Paddleford, but in use as an "old proverb" as early as 1908, when Paddeford was only 10 years old.
Misattributed
Source: Eat, Pray, Love
“My solace and my blessing - unfathomably deep. It is my backbone.”
Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble
Source: Broken Lights Diaries 1953-54. Psalm 118