Looking for original source of "sudden stop" Learned at Uni that it's this 1994 Dornbusch paper: "It is not speed that kills, it is the sudden stop. - Bankers' adage" www.brookings.edu/wp-content/u... - ThreadSky

tobyn.bsky.social • 8 days ago

Looking for original source of "sudden stop"

Learned at Uni that it's this 1994 Dornbusch paper: "It is not speed that kills, it is the sudden stop. - Bankers' adage"
https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1995/06/1995b_bpea_dornbusch_goldfajn_valdes_edwards_bruno.pdf

Comments

moonlighthanger.bsky.social•8 days ago

@quoteinvestigator.com - any ideas?

auld-boy.bsky.social•8 days ago

That saying was used way before then. Perhaps not in that context.

tobyn.bsky.social•8 days ago

A tricky thing to trace.

auld-boy.bsky.social•7 days ago

Just anecdotally, I heard it from people joking around at work in the 80s when I started. That was from men who were around their mid to late 50s and not exactly at the leading edge of anything.

tobyn.bsky.social•8 days ago

But did the bankers take it from Douglas Adams?

“It’s not the fall that kills you; it’s the sudden stop at the end.”

https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2021-02-12-douglas-adams-life-the-universe-and-everything/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CIt%E2%80%99s%20not%20the%20fall%20that%20kills%20you%3B%20it%E2%80%99s%20the%20sudden%20stop%20at%20the%20end.%E2%80%9D%C2%A0

fairlytalladam.bsky.social•8 days ago

Did Douglas Adams take it from Spike Milligan?

"Flying isn't dangerous; crashing is dangerous."

tobyn.bsky.social•8 days ago

Google tells me that this was said by SM on Noel's House Party. So maybe squeaked in as pre-1994?

bryce.lol•8 days ago

Not precisely the same, but The Empire State Building joke predates it by quite a bit. https://barrypopik.com/blog/so_far_so_good

fairlytalladam.bsky.social•8 days ago

If memory serves, and it might not because it was 30 years ago when I read them, I think it was in one of his war memoirs.

nickpelling.bsky.social•8 days ago

Douglas Adams (who was great) stole jokes copiously, I recognised most of them from radio comedy shows.

But theft is an illusion, art doubly so.

twofatfeet.bsky.social•8 days ago

It would be a shame if people weren’t allowed to say a joke if they know they didn’t write it.

nickpelling.bsky.social•8 days ago

I didn't say Douglas Adams wasn't funny (he was), but he did steal a lot of jokes.

I met him once, he dropped by the Bean Library for a chat with sixth formers, but that's another story.

twofatfeet.bsky.social•8 days ago

Just saying that if nobody was allowed to repeat other people’s jokes, we’d run out pretty quickly particularly as the joke police would jump on everything (if they didn’t already). Nobody mentions how much of Terry Pratchett’s early work channels Adams but it helped him find his feet.

itsjustart.bsky.social•8 days ago

Icarus.

quoteinvestigator.com•8 days ago

Here are two pertinent citations:

1853 Oct., The Ladies' Repository
1893 Nov., Locomotive Firemen's Magazine

https://bsky.app/profile/quoteinvestigator.com/post/3ljlfwhajqk2c

https://bsky.app/profile/quoteinvestigator.com/post/3ljlfl4466k2c

brunopanta.bsky.social•8 days ago

La Haine, french cult movie?

tobyn.bsky.social•8 days ago

Don't recall the reference in La Haine, but it was 1995 so I guess it might've followed either Dornbusch or Adams?

brunopanta.bsky.social•8 days ago

The movie starts saying that society is is free falling but its not the fall that hurts, it is the landing. Could be translated to english as sudden stop

tobyn.bsky.social•8 days ago

oh wow - amazingly well remembered! Found it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIwDdvL63l8

tobyn.bsky.social•7 days ago

Still can't find the original Adams quote, though @quoteinvestigator.com‬ has found versions of the saying going back to 1853!

But this is fun: https://mcuoneclipse.com/2016/02/02/freefall/

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