Who said ask forgiveness not permission

The ninth volume discussed marriage advice offered by a powerful church official. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI : 1. But, in truth, the cardinal Barberini … did frankly advise the duchess of Modena to conclude the marriage at once; it being less difficult to obtain forgiveness for it after it was done, than permission for doing it. Strictly speaking, the statement was not presented as a proverb; instead, it was guidance tailored to one particular circumstance. In a newspaper in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania printed a thematically related adage within a story about mischievous children: 2.

The boys, let me add, every one had respectable parents and who would not, for an instant, have allowed such a prank had they known of its existence; but it is easier to beg forgiveness after the deed is performed.

Edward Kennard, but the form was not proverbial: 3. Hernandez began advertising for bids on the mobile classrooms even before the money to pay for them had been approved. The book presented the story of big band trumpet player Randy Brooks who spoke extensively to Pajama: 5.

So, we made the move and then notified those concerned where he would be. But sometimes forgiveness is easier to obtain than permission. In September a newspaper in Rochester, New York reported the observation of an unhappy government planner: 7.

In the adage was attributed to St. Benedict by an environmental activist who was quoted in a St. It's not about abusing situations but about knowing when to push the boundaries. It's about knowing that the overwhelming number of people in life are naysayers and "no sayers" and sometimes you gotta just roll the dice and say WTF. Or the people behind AngelList citation to VentureHacks :. AngelList "corporate policy" is that team members should ask forgiveness, not permission.

We would rather have someone do something wrong than ask permission to do it. Or better, we would rather have someone do something right and not need permission to do it. This is the most common outcome. We would rather have people ship to production whenever they want, than go through an internal review process.

We can fix it on production. We prefer the customer's review process. And it isn't too hard to reveal a new feature to a small portion of our users and iterate on it as we expand it to more users. So next time you're on the fence--wondering whether to take a small risk that could propel you forward in whatever endeavor you care about--just do it.

It is a privilege to respond to the great Nina Gilbert. Nina is a music teacher at The Webb Schools, Claremont, California, and was a stalwart of the late, lamented Stumpers listserve now continuing in a diminished form as Project Wombat. The use of the word in sportswriting is not quite so recent as you might imagine … Such use is, however, far from limited to the world of sports. Howard says that preppies favor the word.

Glossolalia, this sounds anachronistic for Plato by almost years. The phrase "awesome" danced well but only had a minor role with the preppies in the early 80s.

It wasn't overwhelmingly abused until Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure in the late 80s. Then it became not only an abused written word by the mainstream, it had to be orally said with the property Keanu Reeve's drawl and inflection. Almost a yell THEN it became a word to hate. I always thought it was west coast surfer lingo.

Thanks for the challenge on an interesting quotation. There is a citation dated circa that credits Tom McConnell with the saying about forgiveness and permission. Google Books snippet view only. To ride herd on this overpowering operation it is not unusual for Tom McConnell to "drop by in the middle of the night. He sums up his attitude with the statement, "It's easier to get forgiveness than to get permission. The dates given by Google Books are unreliable but this citation passes some sanity checks.

Volume 16 is dated according to a University catalog. Searching within the text indicates that and are future dates. I will ask a friend to check it on paper unless something better is found. I think it was also on some of the posters for the movie. I think Reeve's based his character on Penn's. A couple of weeks ago, I heard a 17th Century bawdy song on the BBC, which included the line "GIve 'em an inch and they'll take an ell. This got me to wondering - has this proverb always existed in a variety of forms?

Or did the composer merely change units in the song in order to get a better rhyme? Which would be yet another argument against universal adoption of the metric system!