I regret nothing!

January 24, 2005 5:24 PM

Someone jumps or falls from a great height, presumably to their death, and shouts, "I regret nothing!" I've seen this used as a joke in a number of places, but where does it originate? It appeared on The Simpsons in 1992 - a guy yells it when he falls through an opening drawbridge while waiting in line for the Itchy and Scratchy movie - but it seems like it has to be a reference to something else.
posted by Fourmyle to Media & Arts (26 answers total)

I can't answer this question, but isn't it upsetting sometimes to think that all good lines have to be a reference to something else?

It always depresses me when I or someone else makes a joke and someone responds, "What's that from?"
posted by trey at 5:31 PM on January 24, 2005

Isn't it upsetting sometimes to think that all good lines have to be a reference to something else?

What's that from?

But seriously, we've become a culture of quoters. We pick and choose things that we find mildly amusing and spread them around. Years and years of syndicated sitcom reruns will do this to a society.
posted by Servo5678 at 5:49 PM on January 24, 2005

Edith Piaf
"Non, Je ne regrette rien"
posted by stuartmm at 6:07 PM on January 24, 2005

I can’t find any references to it in other media. However, some quick googling shows it was part of the last words of President Zachary Taylor. The Simpsons’ writers do have a fascination with ex-presidents, so that may be a likely source (if it is a reference at all).

Sorry Trey, but that’s all part of the fun. The trick is to have it be funny even if you haven’t seen the original source. Having grown up watching the Simpsons, I was amazed by how much of the Mr. Burns character was taken shot for shot from Citizen Kane. Now it’s just twice as funny.
posted by Gary at 6:11 PM on January 24, 2005

I was not familiar with the quote either. The Columbia World of Quotations attributes it to Samuel Beckett:

"No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found."

Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations attributes the following to Adolf Eichmann:

"To sum it all up, I must say that I regret nothing."
posted by mlis at 6:11 PM on January 24, 2005

Hmm... It's a Wonderful Life? I always thought it poked fun at this story but with the angels being unsuccessful in talking the businessman out of suicide.
posted by substrate at 6:15 PM on January 24, 2005

But seriously, we've become a culture of quoters. We pick and choose things that we find mildly amusing and spread them around. Years and years of syndicated sitcom reruns will do this to a society.

Yeah, but go back and read English writing from the 1700s or 1800s and it's no different. Constant in-jokes from their classical education. We have just replaced the classics with sitcoms. I don't know if that's a good thing :)
posted by inksyndicate at 6:21 PM on January 24, 2005

There's also the old chestnut "Goodbye cruel world!"

Hello, ironic twist!
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 6:25 PM on January 24, 2005

Response by poster: trey & Servo5678 - Henri Bergson, to crudely summarize his essay on the subject, thought of humor as something human or emotional unexpectedly displaying mechanical attributes. I tend to agree with that.

If we follow his theories, quoting something familiar in an unexpected context is doubly funny. The delivery is humorous because a human is robotically repeating something they've heard. And the content is humorous because it tries to address a new situation in terms of something familiar rather that putting it into its own context.

So inksyndicate is totally right. I think the problem you're observing comes from the content of our shared culture, not from the nature of what we find humorous.

Unless, of course, you just wish that your friends were more often able to come up with quips that were funnier in content alone than references that are funny in both delivery and content. I have to admit that it would be pretty funny to hang out with people who were able to come up with impromptu Oscar Wilde-caliber dialog, or to be married to a comedienne like Lucille Ball. Which, I suppose, just goes to show the importance of being Arnaz.
posted by Fourmyle at 6:47 PM on January 24, 2005

If you ask me, it's not that our sense of humor is too derivative. It's that it's too dependent on tag lines. Saying "I bent my wookie" or "All your base are belong to us" might be funny, but it isn't telling a joke.

I don't care that my friends aren't Oscar Wilde. I'd just rather hear a joke -- even an old recycled one -- than listen to someone shouting "badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerMUSHROOM" for the umpteenth time.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:16 PM on January 24, 2005

(badgerbadgerbadgerbadgerbadgerMUSHROOM)?
posted by spock at 7:21 PM on January 24, 2005

we've become a culture of quoters

It's worse than that. We've become a culture that can't construct sentences without resorting to cliches. In fact, all of our sentences are merely strings of easy fall-back phrases. Look there! "become a culture" "construct sentences" "fall-back" -- it's virtually impossible [AGH!] to write something these days [EEK!] that actually sounds original.

This is why I love reading good, old authors. Kids these days just ain't got no originality to their words. Reading someone like Dylan Thomas gets you all excited, like you want to find out what small island on the planet exists where people go around talking like that.

Even Hemmingway--bombastic pompous self-indulgant bastard that he was--at least his stuff is direct. No extra, useless words to get in the way. See, he would have probably said something like superfluous, or better yet, leftover (with leftover you get the image of going stale).
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:31 PM on January 24, 2005

Fourmyle, you are my hero. Not only did you make an interesting point, but you also made an awesome pun.
posted by thethirdman at 7:45 PM on January 24, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks, thethirdman. Glad to be of service.
posted by Fourmyle at 8:04 PM on January 24, 2005

Saying "I bent my wookie" or "All your base are belong to us" might be funny, but it isn't telling a joke.

I know these are just examples, but the fact that they're both non-sequiturs in their original context doesn't help the argument. By "quoting" either of these, my comment would effectively be, "What just happened makes no sense." A better example (IMHO) might be if someone fell asleep watching TV in the presence of two friends, and banged their head on the coffee table. In this context, I might remark, "Homer sleep now." Stuck in traffic behind a stalled Hummer, I'd say "Urge to kill... Rising!" or something like that.

Ultimately "quotes" are really most useful as conversational shorthand between friends. To again reference The Simpsons, imagine a man approaches my friend and I on a street corner downtown. He is talking about Jesus and tells us that Jesus saved him and can do the same for us. I might turn to my friend and say, "Lisa, I'd like to buy your rock." Mr. Jesus is puzzled, but my friend and I are amused.

In conclusion, /me likes quotes... =P
posted by idontlikewords at 8:16 PM on January 24, 2005

Is that your final offer?

The problem isn't with quoting other people, it's the quotes themselves. If everyone recited good quotes and did not abuse them, nobody would be bithin' about people using quotes at all. My pet theory. (zing)
posted by Dean Keaton at 8:51 PM on January 24, 2005

This is why I love reading good, old authors. Kids these days just ain't got no originality to their words.

Usually, when I hear people pining for ye olde days, my immediate reaction is to think that things are probably the same now as they were back then. I wouldn't be surprised if society has always been full of unoriginal quoters - it's just that we remember the comedians bursting with originality... maybe there are just as many now as there were then, and they're harder to find as we have to wade through all the recycled tripe.

Also, a lot of classic literature is shamelessly stolen from popular culture of the time; we just don't recognize the source material any more.
posted by painquale at 9:49 PM on January 24, 2005

I know these are just examples, but the fact that they're both non-sequiturs in their original context doesn't help the argument.

Perhaps, but I have one final thing I want you to consider: Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk, but Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now, think about that. That does not make sense! Why would a Wookiee—an eight foot tall Wookiee—want to live on Endor with a bunch of two foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense!
posted by grouse at 12:50 AM on January 25, 2005

You owe me a new keyboard, grouse.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 3:13 AM on January 25, 2005

I suspect Adolf Eichmann is the true source of the phrase. Not only did he say "I regret nothing", but he's also on record as saying the following:

'I will gladly jump into my grave in the knowledge that five million enemies of the Reich have already died like animals.'

A real piece of work, that guy, eh?
posted by Goedel at 6:29 AM on January 25, 2005

yeek. A thread full of Simpsons references and then... that. *shiver*
posted by raedyn at 7:08 AM on January 25, 2005

Goedel, that might be true but you can't prove it.
posted by Dagobert at 7:11 AM on January 25, 2005

Actually, I have a marvelous proof, but this <div> is too small to contain it.
posted by felix at 8:39 AM on January 25, 2005

it would be pretty funny to hang out with people who were able to come up with impromptu Oscar Wilde-caliber dialog

Except that Oscar himself didn't do that -- he (like all famous wits, as far as I know) spent a lot of time honing his zingers, then saved them up for the perfect occasion. He was, in effect, quoting himself, except that nobody knew it (the first time, that is -- after that, or when he was borrowing from someone else, you get into "You will, Oscar, you will" territory).
posted by languagehat at 9:14 AM on January 25, 2005

Languagehat, you then miss using a Monty Python sketch after all the Simpsons refernces :-) to explain exactly your point.
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/poetry/mp-wilde.htm

"Your Highness, you are also like a stream of bat's piss.
PRINCE: What?!?
WHISTLER: It was one of Wilde's. One of Wilde's.
OSCAR: It sodding was not! It was Shaw!
SHAW: I... I merely meant, Your Majesty, that you shine out like a shaft of gold when all around is dark.
PRINCE (accepting the compliment): Oh.
OSCAR (To WHISTLER): Right."
posted by stuartmm at 9:23 AM on January 25, 2005

My understanding was that it's not referring to any one, specific quote, but simply playing off of a general cultural background. Just the general, amorphous concept of people going to their end (incarceration, death, or what have you) and claiming that they have no regrets.

It tickles the mind--in the same way that I assume prompted Fourmyle to post the question--but I think that's one of the reasons it's funny.
posted by cyrusdogstar at 10:13 AM on January 25, 2005