when was the saying "the pot calling the kettle black" first said?
469640
The phrase was probaly around as early as 1500.  It is first attributed to 'Don Quixote' which was written in the mid to late 1500's.  However forms of the phrase reach even earlier with Shakespear writing 'the Raven chides blackness'
835810
It is just a quote....\n\n"Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the mid-day sun"\n\ncan't remember who said it though....
225140
I don't know if there's much etymology of the phrase, but here's an article about it which puts forth some interesting possibilities of the origin.\n\nQuote from the site:\n\n"Some linguists and historians think the expression must have been well known during the war years, citing a story about General Eisenhower's dog. The story goes that the dog (Felix) urinated on a map and the officers joked that the enemy was "pissed off." (Leonard Mosely, Marshall, 1982)."
446316
I think 1947\nCheck out the website below
1033131
Actually Otto von Bismarck (German statesman, 1815-1898) is attributed to having said:\n\n"Those who love sausage and obey the law should not watch either being made." \n\nSo I'd stick with Otto's advice and watch neither.\n\nhttp://www.bartleby.com/73/996.html\n\nOther verison of the quote:\n\n"Those who like sausage and the law should never watch either being made."\n\nBill
404827
Old British Term from 1800s meaning "pints & quarts".  Now it's slang for minding your manners, like please & thank you.
693108
The phrase \n"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" is widely attributed to Voltaire, but cannot be found in his writings. With good reason. The phrase was invented by a later author as an epitome of his attitude. It appeared in The Friends of Voltaire (1906), written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall under the pseudonym S[tephen] G. Tallentyre. Chapter VII is devoted to Helvetius (1715-1771), whom she depicts as a kindly, generous person, with a hint of more talent to raise him above mediocrity. He married and settled in the sticks, with a new wife who was unfashionably old (32), and they were happy. This was ended by his tragic aspiration, to earn some small glory for himself as a philosopher.
998592
It comes from the early 1800s in London.  The term "pig" for a contemptable person was around a long time before that.  Particularly, the name refers to a certain group of Police called the Bow Street Runners that criminals referred to as China Street Pigs.
323269
[Q] From Florence C Goold: “What is the origin and actual meaning of bob’s your uncle?”\n[A] This is a catchphrase which seemed to arise out of nowhere and yet has had a long period of fashion and is still going strong. It’s known mainly in Britain and Commonwealth countries, and is really a kind of interjection. It’s used to show how simple it is to do something: “You put the plug in here, press that switch, and Bob’s your uncle!”.\nThe most attractive theory—albeit suspiciously neat—is that it derives from a prolonged act of political nepotism. The Victorian prime minister, Lord Salisbury (family name Robert Cecil, pronounced ) appointed his rather less than popular nephew Arthur Balfour to a succession of posts. The most controversial, in 1887, was chief secretary of Ireland, a post for which Balfour—despite his intellectual gifts—was considered unsuitable. The Dictionary of National Biography says: “The country saw with something like stupefaction the appointment of the young dilettante to what was at the moment perhaps the most important, certainly the most anxious office in the administration”. As the story goes, the consensus among the irreverent in Britain was that to have Bob as your uncle was a guarantee of success, hence the expression. Since the very word nepotism derives from the Italian word for nephew (from the practice of Italian popes giving preferment to nephews, a euphemism for their bastard sons), the association here seems more than apt.\nActually, Balfour did rather well in the job, confounding his critics and earning the bitter nickname Bloody Balfour from the Irish, which must have quietened the accusations of undue favouritism more than a little (he also rose to be Prime Minister from 1902–5). There is another big problem: the phrase isn’t recorded until 1937, in Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Mr Partridge suggested it had been in use since the 1890s, but nobody has found an example in print. This is surprising. If public indignation or cynicism against Lord Salisbury’s actions had been great enough to provoke creation of the saying, why didn’t it appear—to take a case—in a satirical magazine of the time such as Punch?\nA rather more probable, but less exciting, theory has it that it derives from the slang phrase all is bob, meaning that everything is safe, pleasant or satisfactory. This dates back to the seventeenth century or so (it’s in Captain Francis Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue of 1785). There have been several other slang expressions containing bob, some associated with thievery or gambling, and from the eighteenth century on it was also a common generic name for somebody you didn’t know. Any or all of these might have contributed to its genesis.
1166350
Let me get this right... A yank, labelling someone a prick?\n"Pots and kettles, spring to mind"!
149120
Old english bar owners.  Figuring out evenings profits by measuring their "pints and quarts" sold vs. inventory left to insure there wasn't waste or thievery.\n\nBTW - "whet your whistle" came from the same time period where beer mugs used to literally have a whistle on them.  Patrons would blow them when they wanted the bar wench to refill their steins with more beer!  :)  (And now you know the REST of the story)....
237460
May 10, 1954\n\nhttp://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9343590?tocId=9343590
979667
On March 10, 1876, in Boston, Massachusetts, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Thomas Watson fashioned the device itself; a crude thing made of a wooden stand, a funnel, a cup of acid, and some copper wire. But these simple parts and the equally simple first telephone call -- "Mr. Watson, come here, I want you!" -- belie a complicated past. Bell filed his application just hours before his competitor, Elisha Gray, filed notice to soon patent a telephone himself. What's more, though neither man had actually built a working telephone, Bell made his telephone operate three weeks later using ideas outlined in Gray's Notice of Invention, methods Bell did not propose in his own patent.
1013227
Glenn Beck had a funny commentary on the penny.\n\nHe said you know it's time to get rid of the penny, when you can have a bowl of pennies with a sign next to them saying "TAKE ONE" sitting by the register in the most robbed convience store in the roughest neighborhood in Harlem, and no one touches any.
236111
It's a black on black insult used to accuse a black person of selling out or otherwise betray his race. It's a reference to Uncle Tom's Cabin by Hariet Beecher Stowe. \n\nIn recent times, it has been used by blacks or whites to refer to those blacks who might be conservative or Republican.
935484
Interesting. Where did you find the quote?
636726
You misquoted him. It's:\n\n"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."\n\nLooks the same but the 'tends' puts a different meaning on it.\n\nHe made the pronouncement in 1870 but had left parliament 5 years before.