3 ms·

- I'd be curious if the origin is really the Navy seals. I couldn't find in my brief searching any where else... - I like John Wooden's saying "be quick but do

- I'd be curious if the origin is really the Navy seals. I couldn't find in my brief searching any where else... - I like John Wooden's saying "be quick but don't hurry". I mentioned that to a doctor who trained in the mid 20th century and he said that surgeons had a line "hurry, but don't rush"

electric_mayhem 2y ago
I don’t have an authoritative source but a mentor of mine who was a navy seal has trotted out those exact words quite frequently over the years.
christophilus 2y ago
My brother got it from the Army. It’s pretty ubiquitous.
raphman 2y ago
Quick observations: - several people here mention that they learned this phrase in the military - the first written mention I could find is in a 1998 army report [0] - the first Google Books hit for this phrase is from 1970 but this seems to be an error - the full text preview is from a different, recent book [1] - Internet Archive has a lot of hits - but the earliest ones - except for the army report mentioned above - are from the 2000s (don't be fooled by wrong publishing dates in the metadata) [2] - Google Ngram Viewer shows a brief appearance around 1980 (maybe a fluke) and then a steady rise in the 2000s [3]. - In one army magazine I saw an extended version: "slow is smooth, smooth is fast, fast is deadly" (which doesn't transfer that well to other professions) [0] https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA357718/page/23/mode/2up?q=%22slow+is+smooth%22 https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA357718/page/23/mode/2up?... [1] https://www.google.de/books/edition/Span_of_Control/IYy_EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22slow+is+smooth%22+smooth+is+fast&pg=PT101&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.de/books/edition/Span_of_Control/IYy_EAAA... [2] https://archive.org/search?query=%22slow+is+smooth%22&sin=TXT&sort=date https://archive.org/search?query=%22slow+is+smooth%22&sin=TX... [3] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=slow+is+smooth&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=slow+is+smooth...
FireBeyond 2y ago
> surgeons had a line "hurry, but don't rush" One that came to my mind when I was trying to help my step-daughter learn to drive: "Be assertive, but don't be aggressive."
- readthenotes1 2y ago
  I told my child "Remember, they're all out to kill you."

electric_mayhem 2y ago

I don’t have an authoritative source but a mentor of mine who was a navy seal has trotted out those exact words quite frequently over the years.

christophilus 2y ago

My brother got it from the Army. It’s pretty ubiquitous.

raphman 2y ago

Quick observations: - several people here mention that they learned this phrase in the military - the first written mention I could find is in a 1998 army report [0] - the first Google Books hit for this phrase is from 1970 but this seems to be an error - the full text preview is from a different, recent book [1] - Internet Archive has a lot of hits - but the earliest ones - except for the army report mentioned above - are from the 2000s (don't be fooled by wrong publishing dates in the metadata) [2] - Google Ngram Viewer shows a brief appearance around 1980 (maybe a fluke) and then a steady rise in the 2000s [3]. - In one army magazine I saw an extended version: "slow is smooth, smooth is fast, fast is deadly" (which doesn't transfer that well to other professions) [0] https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA357718/page/23/mode/2up?q=%22slow+is+smooth%22 https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA357718/page/23/mode/2up?... [1] https://www.google.de/books/edition/Span_of_Control/IYy_EAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22slow+is+smooth%22+smooth+is+fast&pg=PT101&printsec=frontcover https://www.google.de/books/edition/Span_of_Control/IYy_EAAA... [2] https://archive.org/search?query=%22slow+is+smooth%22&sin=TXT&sort=date https://archive.org/search?query=%22slow+is+smooth%22&sin=TX... [3] https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=slow+is+smooth&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=3 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=slow+is+smooth...

FireBeyond 2y ago

> surgeons had a line "hurry, but don't rush" One that came to my mind when I was trying to help my step-daughter learn to drive: "Be assertive, but don't be aggressive."

readthenotes1 2y ago
I told my child "Remember, they're all out to kill you."