A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

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Entry from December 19, 2010
“Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself”

“Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself” was called “The Bureaucrat’s Law” in 1979. For a bureaucrat who can foist the work on someone else, nothing is impossible.
   
“Nothing is impossible to the chap who doesn’t have to do it himself” has been cited in print since at least 1954 and is of unknown authorship.
 
     
Google Books
July 1954, Changing Times (The Kiplinger Magazine), “Notes on these changing times,” pg. 2, col. 3:
Nothing is impossible to the chap who doesn’t have to do it himself.
   
23 September 1954, Sarasota (FL) Herald-Tribune, “Earl Wilson’s Broadway,” pg. 15, col. 6:
Earl’s Pearls…
Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.
     
Google Books
The Reader’s Digest
Volume 66
1955
Pg. 56:
Nothing is impossible to the man who does not have to do it himself (Earl Wilson).
   
5 January 1956, Springfield (MA) Union, “Walter Winchell On Broadway,” pg. 21, col. 2: 
Pageant’s accurate size-up: “Nothing is impossible to a man who doesn’t have to do it himself.”
 
31 August 1957, Kentucky New Era (Hopkinsville, KY), “Try and Stop Me” by Bennett Cerf, pg. 4, col. 3: 
Ye of faint heart, remember this: nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.
 
27 October 1965, Hartford (CT) Courant, “Today’s Chuckle,” pg. 1:
Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.
 
Google Books
The Nance Lectures
By James J. Nance
Cleveland, OH: Bureau of Business Research, Cleveland State University
1979
Pg. 37:
The Bureaucrat’s Law: “Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn’t have to do it himself.”

Posted by Barry Popik
New York CityGovernment/Law/Military/Religion /Health • Sunday, December 19, 2010 • Permalink


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