2002-04-05 I know of at least one proverb that has changed over time. A miss is as good as a mile was originally a miss is as good as an ell. But, when the ell fell into disuse, the unit was changed to mile.
John ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bill Potts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, 2002-04-05 15:36 Subject: [USMA:19264] RE: Gram of action > I've never heard that attributed to Friedrich Engels. > > The very old English proverb is "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of > cure." > > Possibly Engels was paraphrasing that. > > John Wesley (the founder of Methodism) certainly paraphrased it, with "An > ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge." (Or, possibly, the proverb was > a paraphrasing of what Wesley said.) > > In any case, I wouldn't change a word of it. It's a proverb, for goodness > sake, not a measurement standard. > > This is, by the way, something we've dealt with before, in this list. We > don't advance the cause of metrication by trying to metricate traditional > proverbs, sayings, metaphors, and other figures of speech. They are what > they are and they reflect the time in which they acquired their proverb > status. > > Bill Potts, CMS > Roseville, CA > http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] > > -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On > Behalf Of M R > Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 11:45 > To: U.S. Metric Association > Subject: [USMA:19261] Gram of action > > > I read a proverb > "An ounce of action is better than ton of theory" > by Frederich Engels. > > During life of Frederich Engels, I think Germany > should have used either grams or their traditional > units and he should have used such unit. > > Some 1 should have made it an ounce. > So we will say > "A gram of action is better than ton of theory". > That way, it will be easier to visualise & compare > between 1 gram & 1 million grams. > > Madan > > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Yahoo! Tax Center - online filing with TurboTax > http://taxes.yahoo.com/ > >
