Today’s Latin Lesson Comes from The Governor of The Great State of California

Gov. Jerry Brown’s 1961 undergraduate degree from the University of California at Berkeley is in Classics.

Lest there was some doubt, at a December 13 Capitol press conference explaining that California must exercise fiscal disicpline and spend within its means, Brown said:

“Nemo dat quod non habet.”

Translated: “No man gives what he doesn’t have.”

Brown left out the “quod” when he used the line but aides assured that secretly he meant to say it.

As icing on the cake, Brown assessed the nation’s electorate as “frustrated and discontent.” Troubled, too, by the inequities highlighted by the Occupy protesters. 

“In Ancient Rome it was the same fight between the aristocrats and the plebians. The good news is it took a couple hundred years to fall apart.”

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