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This is usually shortened to:

If the facts are with you, pound on the facts. Else if the law is with you, pound on the law. If neither is with you, pound on the table.



i went to the trouble to search for the first known example to provide a historically salient version. I shortened it slightly because it had been written as a dialog with lots of quotation marks, but i kept the unique phraseology. google the wording I used and you will find it on books.google.com 1911 before any of the usual suspects could have said it.


Thank you for the history.

I gave the short version in addition to voting you up because it is memorable, and I thought that someone out there might wonder why it sounded familiar.




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