# Who said it first

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-it-first/53432>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 7, 2001, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-it-first/53432 "2001-02-07T01:29:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![UnaBubba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/45deac/32.png) [@UnaBubba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UnaBubba)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2001, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-it-first/53432/1 "2001-02-07T01:29:55Z")

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Was John F kennedy the first to use the chiasmus “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”? I thought it went back to Ancient Greece.

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**Author:** ![KarlGauss](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/karlgauss/32/3713_2.png) [@KarlGauss](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KarlGauss)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2001, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-it-first/53432/2 "2001-02-07T01:41:06Z")

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Don’t know, but thanks for teaching me **chiasmus**.

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**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2001, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-it-first/53432/3 "2001-02-07T02:38:10Z")

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I can’t get you back to the Greeks, but **Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations** provides a rich legacy of similarly stated thoughts:

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> For, stripped of the temporary associations which give rise to it, it is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return. **Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.** , _Address Before John Sedgwick Post No. 4, Grand Army of the Republic_ [May 30, 1884]

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> As has often been said, the youth who loves his Alma Mater will always ask, not “What can she do for me?” but “What can I do for her?” **Le Baron Russel Briggs** [1885 - 1934], _Routine and Ideals_ [1904] _College Life_

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> In the great fulfillment we must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation. **Warren Gamaliel Harding** [1865 - 1923], _Republican National Convention, Chicago_ [June 17, 1920]

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> This thought had lain in Kennedy’s mind for a long time. As far back as 1945 he had noted down in a looseleaf notebook a quotation from Rousseau: “As soon as any man says of the affairs of the state, What does it matter to me? the sate may be given up as lost.” **Arthur M. Schlessinger, Jr.** , _A Thousand Days_ [1965], _prologue, footnote_

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**Author:** ![Cabbage](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f07891/32.png) [@Cabbage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cabbage)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2001, 4:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-said-it-first/53432/4 "2001-02-07T04:48:40Z")

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This is from _Fabulous Fallacies_ by Tad Tuleja:

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> And, according to Leo Rosten[_The Power of Positive Nonsense_], it also appeared in Latin, when Cicero used it in his first consular address, in 63 B.C. I have not been able to track this down, though the line certainly sounds Roman enough.