Learn English – Where does “If I can do it, you can do it!” come from

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I first heard this in "Don King's Prizefighter for Wii", where he says, if I'm transcribing correctly:

If I can do it, you can do it!

The heart would say, in America anybody can do it!

Trying to Google this first sentence I'm getting so many hits that I've no idea where to start looking.

My native language is German, and the corresponding translation of this sentence is rarely used in German. And when I find it used in German, it might well have been translated from English.

So I'm curious whether it might come from a single source?

Best Answer

It's such a common and simple phrase in English, especially in persuasive speech, that it's hard to believe it came from a single source; more likely, it had multiple independent coinings. It simply refers to the ease of an action or process, and implies a little self-deprecation on the part of the speaker; if the speaker, implied to be a common, unextrordinary person, can accomplish this thing (usually financial success), then anyone can.

I would associate it with the egalitarian ideals of the U.S., where everyone is assumed to have the innate ability to pursue and achieve "the American dream", but that may be just personal bias.

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