From: Friends
Genre: Television
Who said it?: Ross Geller
The story behind the quote: The quote comes from the very popular sitcom Friends. The show focused on a group of friends (pretty obvious) with rather different personalities yet managed to stick together for a long time. The show launched the careers of many of the actors and actresses involved in the show.
The quote comes from Ross Geller (played by David Schwimmer). The episode starts out with Rachel Green (played by Jennifer Aniston) and Phoebe Buffay (played by Lisa Kudrow) commenting about a self-defense class they took and how they can pretty much defend themselves. However, Ross, who mentions he’s taken “kara-teh,” they actually won’t be able to protect themselves from attackers because they do not have, what he called “unagi.”
Trivia: What Ross probably means is “Zanshin,” which means pretty much what he thinks the word “unagi” means.
Geek wisdom: Even the smartest people can be wrong at times. In Friends, Ross is supposedly the most educated of the group. However, he flat out gets the word wrong and, even when confronted with different people commenting that “unagi” is an eel, he still never bothers to actually check if he was wrong since he “knows” he’s correct.
Ross’ mistake can happen to anyone, even you. Make sure to double-check your facts once in a while and be ready to admit when you’re wrong.