Source: His Dark Materials, The Subtle Knife (1997), Ch. 8 : The Tower of the Angels
Context: Will darted back to the gutter, and picked up the knife, and the fight was over. The young man, cut and battered, clambered up the step, and saw Will standing above him holding the knife; he stared with a sickly anger and then turned and fled.
Lincoln Day Dinner Speech http://blogs.iowapolitics.com/lincolnday/070414tancredo.mp3 (April 14, 2007).
“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”
At a Philadelphia fundraiser, as quoted in "Obama: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’" http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2008/06/14/obama-if-they-bring-a-knife-to-the-fight-we-bring-a-gun/, The Wall Street Journal (14 June 2008)
2008
“Why aren't we letting ISIS go and fight Assad and then we pick up the remnants?”
Interview in 60 Minutes http://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-60-minutes-scott-pelley/, 2015-09-27
Cited by Mitt Romney in Business Insider http://uk.businessinsider.com/mitt-romney-donald-trump-isis-60-minutes-ridiculous-2016-3?r=US&IR=T, 2016-03-03
2010s, 2015
“An unprovoked head butt is like bringing a sawed-off shotgun to a knife fight.”
"Contributory Negligence", from Cautionary Tales for Dead Commuters (1985)
Written for a judge who said a raped woman hitchhiker had been guilty of "contributory negligence". In the poem, Attila hitches a lift with a judge, attacks him and uses the ruling in his defence.
“I don't want to end up in the gutter punctured by machine gun slugs.”
“I pick myself up off the ground to have you knock me back down
Again and again”
"Cruel to Be Kind" on the single Little Hitler / Cruel to Be Kind (1978) (Top of the Pops 1979) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JJ7oGHwMTI
Context: I pick myself up off the ground to have you knock me back down
Again and again and when I ask you to explain
You say, you've got to be...
Cruel to be kind in the right measure
Cruel to be kind it's a very good sign
Cruel to be kind means that I love you
Baby, you got to be cruel, you got to be cruel to be kind.
On Stanley Baldwin, as cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), Ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 322 ISBN 1586486381
Also quoted by Kay Halle in Irrepressible Churchill: A Treasury of Winston Churchill's Wit http://books.google.com/books?id=b0MTAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Occasionally+he+stumbled+over+the+truth+but+hastily+picked+himself+up+and+hurried+on+as+if+nothing+had+happened%22&pg=PA133#v=onepage (1966).
The 1930s
Variant: Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
