Oh, I suppose many of you would be curious as to the content of this quiz. This board has more than a fair share of smart cookies (asses), so here it is, submitted for your feedback. 
**
THE SMART ASS QUIZ ON FAMOUS PHRASES**
Facebook seems full of dumb-ass quizzes. Well, not this one. I’m not talking about identifying catch phrases from TV shows, song lyrics or anything from pop culture, like “who was known for saying DY-NO-MITE!!! all the time”? (It was “JJ” on the 1970s TV show “Good Times”, portrayed by Jimmie Walker. Keepin’ your head above water, makin’ a wave when you can.)
No, I’m talking about quotes, mottoes or phrases that most educated people have heard or read, particularly in secondary references, but may not know or remember the original context. Here are ten examples of fairly well known lines from Politics, History and Literature. Can you identify the correct context and/or source for them?
**1. The credo “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” comes from:
**
(A) “The Republic”, by Plato
(B) “The Communist Manifesto”, by Karl Marx
(C) “The Prince”, by Niccolo Machiavelli
(D) The United States Constitution
Answer:** (B) Karl Marx, “The Communist Manifesto”**. This one is supposed to be easy, and yet only 1 out of 3 Americans polled in 2002 knew it wasn’t in the Constitution. Another 1 out of 3 thought it “could be” in the US Constitution, and the other 1 out of 3 were sure of it. But you were smarter than that, right?
**2. John F. Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” What was he referring to?
**
(A) Military service in the armed forces, Reserves or Coast Guard
(B) Political service (i.e., “the people are the government”)
(C) Humanitarian service abroad, in the Peace Corps
(D) Community service, at the local level (encouraging civic volunteerism)
Answer:** (C) The Peace Corps**. A lot of people don’t know that the Peace Corps is a US Government sponsored program, or that Kennedy had anything to do with it. In fact, Kennedy promoted the idea of a Peace Corps to help promote a non-military “helping hand” image of Americans abroad as part of his Presidential campaign, and creating it was his first Executive Order as President.
**3. “Never… was so much owed by so many to so few”. Who said this, and about whom?
**
(A) Simonides (ancient Greek poet), about “The 300 Spartans” at Thermopylae
(B) Abraham Lincoln, about fallen Union soldiers at Gettysburg
(C) William Jennings Bryan, about Andrew Carnegie and J. P. Morgan (meant ironically)
(D) Winston Churchill, about the RAF during the Battle of Britain in World War II
Answer: (D) Winston Churchill. The full quote is specifically about war (“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few”), so whatever Bryan may have ever said about Carnegie or Morgan, this wasn’t it. Simonides wrote a famous epigram for “The 300 Spartans” (a vastly outnumbered force which held off the advance of the invading Persian army through a critical pass for several days), which was inscribed on a memorial tablet at Thermopylae where a modern replica is today: “Go tell the Spartans, passerby, / That here, by Spartan law, we lie”. And while Abraham Lincoln did make a famous tribute to the soldiers who died at Gettysburg (saying they “gave the last, full measure of devotion”), nobody would ever refer to the number of fallen soldiers there as “the few”, with around 50,000 casualties from both sides over three days of fighting.
4. “Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears.” Shakespeare wrote these words, but for whom to say?
(A) Julius Caesar, a general and statesman
(B) Brutus, his friend
(C) Mark Anthony, his ally
(D) Casca, his enemy
Answer: (C) Mark Antony (not the singer and husband to Jennifer Lopez), while speaking at Caesar’s funeral; the next line is “I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” Casca was the chief instigator of the plot to kill Caesar, and convinced Brutus, a close friend of Caesar’s but a patriot first, that it was necessary for the survival of the Republic. As for Julius Caesar (who many people incorrectly identify as the speaker of this line), his most famous quotes are the boast “Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”); “Alea jacta est” (“The die is cast”), said when he violated standing Roman laws and brought his army across the Rubicon River towards Rome (which event is also the source of the phrase “crossing the Rubicon” to mean crossing a point of no return); and “Et tu, Brute?” (“Even you, Brutus?”), his last words before dying, expressing dismay at seeing his friend among his attackers.
5. “This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.” What is this an allusion to, in its original source?
(A) Guy Fawkes, who was caught trying to blow up the English Parliament in 1605
(B) A global nuclear holocaust, where death would come so fast you’d barely have time to cry out
(C) The fear of death, coupled with a sense of the relative insignificance of one’s own life
(D) The descent of (Western) civilization into despair, decadence and self-destruction
Answer: (A) Guy Fawkes! This ending to his poem “The Hollow Men” is T. S. Eliot’s most recognized quote, and the reference to Guy Fawkes is set up in one of the two opening epigrams to the poem, “A penny for the Old Guy”. This is a traditional thing for children to say in England to get money on Guy Fawkes Day (to offset the cost of making and burning an effigy of Guy), which commemorates the day he was foiled (“Remember, remember the Fifth of November / The gunpowder, treason and plot”). Instead of blowing up Parliament with a bang, he was tortured and executed as a traitor, which surely involved some whimpering.
All right, for a less literal and more literary view of the poem, give yourself credit for either (C) or (D) as well (possibly subject to your ability to snow over your English Lit teacher). The one image that is NOT being alluded to is (B). The poem was published in 1925, well before World War II, and while it is replete with bleak images of death and destruction, thermonuclear annihilation was simply not in scope. Eliot himself would be quoted late in his life (1958) as saying he would choose different words if he were to write it anew: “…while the association of the H-bomb is irrelevant [to the poem], it would today come to everyone’s mind”.
**6. Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “The only thing we have to fear… is fear itself.” The fear of what?
**
(A) Fear of spending, lending money as the Great Depression continued
(B) Fear of incurring an unprecedented national debt to fund his New Deal
(C) Fear of the Axis enemy (Germany and Japan), in gearing up to fight World War II
(D) Fear of the terrifying atomic bomb, unveiled at the end of World War II
Answer: (A) Economic fears resulting in a stagnation of spending and investment. Among the opening lines of his first Inaugural Address in 1932 were: “This is pre-eminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So first of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear… is fear itself: nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
As the Great Depression deepened and prolonged, people hoarded money: those who had it sat on it, and those who got it spent as little as possible, from the level of individual families all the way up to banks and major corporations. But this made the whole problem grow deeper and longer: money has economic value only as by moving around. Since stasis equals stagnation and few in private industry and the general public were willing to take the risk of being “the first one back into the pool”, Roosevelt proposed a New Deal that would pump government money into the economy instead.
Fears of a “massive national debt” were certainly voiced, but that was a very concrete topic of discussion well beyond “fear itself”. Many conservatives (from his day to the present) painted this approach as open-ended financial irresponsibility. Without getting into that debate, it’s worth noting that Roosevelt’s New Deal in particular was planned with the firm intent to keep the Federal budget ultimately balanced. John Maynard Keynes, the most famous proponent of government spending as an economic stimulus, actually exhorted Roosevelt to run a much larger deficit, saying that his New Deal was too low-key to have the necessary impact.
The United States would not enter World War II until Roosevelt’s third term, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 (which Roosevelt called “a date that will live in infamy”). And by the time the U. S. was ready to deploy the atomic bomb, Roosevelt had passed away: the decision to loose nuclear devastation on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was made by his Vice President of 82 days turned sitting President, Harry S. Truman.
7. What overmatched commander defiantly replied, “I have not yet begun to fight!” to a question of his surrender?
(A) Leonidas, King of Sparta, in response to the Persians
(B) John Paul Jones, American naval commander, in response to the British
(C) Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, Confederate general, in response to the Union
(D) Anthony McAuliffe, American commander, in response to the Germans
Answer: (B), John Paul Jones (not the bass player for Led Zeppelin), captain of the first naval ship ever to hoist the U. S. flag. His 1779 capture of the English ship Serapis (where this verbal exchange was made with its captain) was important for two reasons: first, for the boost in morale such a turnaround victory imparted (even the British would report on this battle with admiration); and second, Jones’ ship in that battle, the Bonhomme Richard (named for the French translation of Ben Franklin’s book Poor Richard’s Almanac), was a ship loaned to the Revolutionary cause by France. This victory helped convinced the French that the American forces really were worth backing, and French naval support was crucial in George Washington’s 1781 victory over Cornwallis at Yorktown that would prompt the British to give up the war.
Leonidas was the King of Sparta and the leader of the famous “300 Spartans” at the Battle of Thermopylae (already mentioned earlier in this quiz), and fell there with his men. His rejection of the Persian demand to lay down their weapons was to reply: “Come and get them.” The Persians did so, but at great cost: while the Spartans and their allies were killed nearly to a man, they took nearly ten Persians with them for every one.
General “Stonewall” Jackson gained his nickname for refusing to surrender at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas) when another Confederate general said of Jackson’s brigade, “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall!”, but the battle did not see any formal request to surrender from the Union, whose attack was ultimately repelled despite having significantly more men.
General McAuliffe rejected the German request for his surrender at the Battle of the Bulge with the single word: “NUTS!”. This response had to be explained to the German delegation (and even some non-American allies). The Allied forces would ultimately get reinforcements and prevail, defeating the last major German offensive attack of World War II.
P.S.: If you got this question right by associating this line with a naval battle because of a Bugs Bunny vs. Yosemite Sam cartoon (“Buccaneer Bunny”), you now know why the classic Looney Tunes are required viewing for my children!
8. Of whom or what was it written: “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety”?
(A) Venus (the goddess of Love), by the ancient Roman poet Ovid
(B) The unnamed subject of a poetic ode, by John Keats
(C) Cleopatra, by William Shakespeare
(D) The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul, by William Butler Yeats
Answer: (C), Cleopatra. She is thus described by Mark Antony’s lieutenant Enobarbus in Shakespeare’s play The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra to explain how deeply she has charmed his boss, going on to say, “…other women cloy / The appetites they feed, but she makes hungry / Where most she satisfies.”
Ovid wrote a few love-related works, the Amores and the Ars Amatoria (the Art of Love), but both were satirical or ironic in nature and not elegiac except in form. John Keats was a Romantic poet who is famous for his odes, but to things like A Grecian Urn or to Melancholy. And while one of Yeats’ most well-known poems is entitled Sailing To Byzantium (the Latin name for Istanbul), he never actually did so - it being a whatsit, a thingy, you know, a metaphor.
Sorry if you assumed I wouldn’t put in two Shakespeare answers in the same quiz, but that’s the only trick to what otherwise seems to me to be a relatively easy one in this quiz.
9. Who expressed that “History repeats itself - first as tragedy, and again as farce”, and about what?
(A) Pliny the Elder, on the stabbing of Caligula (as an echo of Julius Caesar)
(B) Karl Marx, on the rise to power of Napoleon III (as an echo of Napoleon I)
(C) Mark Twain, on the election of Grover Cleveland (four years after he was not re-elected)
(D) Warren Buffett, on the stock market crash of 1987 as an echo of the one from 1929
Answer: (B), Karl Marx in denigrating the 1851 coup d’état of Charles Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte in The 18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon. His title refers to the short-lived French Revolutionary Calendar date of “18th Brumaire” (November 9th), on which date in 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte dissolved the legislature of the First Republic and seized control of France. Over half a century later, his nephew Louis-Napoleon similarly seized power and dissolved the Second Republic, and chose December 2nd to do so: a double reference to his forebear, being the date when Napoleon crowned himself Emperor and also of his greatest military victory (at Austerlitz). A year after his coup Louis-Napoleon also assumed the title of Emperor, again on December 2nd, taking the dynastic royal name of Napoleon III. In response to this, Marx wrote his work to expound on how “the class struggle in France… made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero’s part.” Ouch!
10. What military leader first said: “On my signal, unleash Hell”?
(A) Maximus Decimus Meridius (ancient Roman general)
(B) William Prescott (American officer in the Revolutionary War)
(C) Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson (Confederate general, U. S. Civil War)
(D) George Patton (U. S. general, World War II)
Answer: (A) General Maximus. This is something of a trick question, though, because Maximus is a completely fictional character from Gladiator, the 2000 Academy Award winner for Best Picture! The line sounds familiar and stirring, but by at least one account, was made up by Russell Crowe while in character. If anything, it echoes an image of canine carnage from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Cry ‘Havoc’, and let slip the dogs of war”.
William Prescott was the commander at Bunker Hill, outnumbered and low on munitions, who uttered the famous directive: “Don’t fire until you see the whites of their eyes!” In a similar situation at the First Battle of Bull Run (Manassas), Stonewall Jackson cried: “Up, Virginians! Hold your fire until they are within fifty yards, and then give them the bayonet! And when you charge, yell like furies!” (Thus was born the “Rebel Yell”, the signature war cry of the Confederate army.) General Patton’s best known quote is: “The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.”
SCORING
0 - 2: Dumb Ass. Work harder on climbing the Ass Ladder, my friend!
3 - 6: Just An Ass. After all, you can’t spell “unwashed masses” without “asses”.
7 - 8: Wise Ass. For an ass, you truly are wise!
9 - 10: Smart Ass. You’re about as smart an ass as one could hope to find!