Origin
The precise origin of the phrase is uncertain. Various sources credit Lieutenant Colonel William J. Clear, or Lieutenant Colonel William Casey, but the phrase is most often attributed to journalist Ernie Pyle. It has also been attributed to U.S. Military Chaplain William T. Cummings in a field sermon during the Battle of Bataan in 1942.
Read more about this topic: There Are No Atheists In Foxholes
Famous quotes containing the word origin:
“We have got rid of the fetish of the divine right of kings, and that slavery is of divine origin and authority. But the divine right of property has taken its place. The tendency plainly is towards ... “a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.””
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our theism is the purification of the human mind. Man can paint, or make, or think nothing but man. He believes that the great material elements had their origin from his thought.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)