Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
1553
AUTHOR:
Spiro Theodore Agnew (1918–96)
QUOTATION:
In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4–H Club—the “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”
ATTRIBUTION:
Vice President SPIRO T. AGNEW, address to the California Republican state convention, San Diego, California, September 11, 1970.—Congressional Record, September 16, 1970, vol. 116, p. 32017.
William Safire, then a speechwriter for President Nixon, was the author of “nattering nabobs of negativism,” according to The Washingtonian, March 1985, p. 11, and The Washington Post, August 27, 1987, p. C4.
