# Where did this quotation in "The Last Emperor" come from? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 22, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-quotation-in-the-last-emperor-come-from/341137 "2006-01-22T19:37:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@Speaker\_for\_the\_Dead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Speaker_for_the_Dead)\ **Post date:** [January 22, 2006, 7:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-quotation-in-the-last-emperor-come-from/341137/1 "2006-01-22T19:37:33Z")
As Peter O’Toole is first tutoring the young Pu Yi, he explains the importance of grammar: “If you cannot say what you mean, you will never mean what you say, and a gentleman always means what he says.” Was this written just for the movie, or does it have a historical context? ---
**Author:** ![Giles](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giles/32/60_2.png) [@Giles](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giles)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-quotation-in-the-last-emperor-come-from/341137/2 "2006-01-24T15:33:30Z")
It does seem to be related to this exchange from **Alice in Wonderland** : > [@Lewis Carroll](#): > > “Then you should say what you mean,” the March Hare went on. > "I do, " Alice hastily replied; “at least I mean what I say, that’s the same thing, you know.” > “Not the same thing a bit!” said the Hatter. "Why, you might just as well say that “I see what I eat” is the same thing as “I eat what I see!” And then there’s also Humpty Dumpty in **Through the Looking Glass** on the meaning of “meaning”. > [@Lewis Carroll](#): > > “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.” > “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” > “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master - that’s all.” ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2006, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-quotation-in-the-last-emperor-come-from/341137/3 "2006-01-24T19:04:13Z")
Or from Dr. Seusse? > [@](#): > > I meant what I said and I said what I meant - and Elehpant’s faithful 100 percent. ---
**Author:** ![booklyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a88e57/32.png) [@booklyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/booklyn)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-quotation-in-the-last-emperor-come-from/341137/4 "2006-01-26T00:46:16Z")
this reminds me of Chompsky… > **[Colorless green ideas sleep furiously](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously)** > > Colorless green ideas sleep furiously is a sentence composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book Syntactic Structures as an example of a sentence that is grammatically well-formed, but semantically nonsensical. The sentence was originally used in his 1955 thesis The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory and in his 1956 paper "Three Models for the Description of Language".: 116  Although the sentence is grammatically well-formed according to the patterns of English, no obvious understandable mean > C... ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2006, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-quotation-in-the-last-emperor-come-from/341137/5 "2006-01-26T12:19:07Z")
**booklyn** , welcome to SDMB. Thanks for mentioning that one. I had misremembered it as “Sweet green dreams sleep furiously.” (But I first learned about it a little closer to the time that Chomsky came up with it.) Now it makes less sense – which is a good thing, of course. I noticed another response of yours elsewhere. Hope you hang around.