Who said fight fire with fire

Somewhere along the way, the "fight" got added to this phrase. Shakespeare might have created the "fire with fire" part, but it seems by the time Western novels rolled out in the s and s, it had become " fight fire with fire. Some of you might be wondering what it would actually look like to start an actual fire when another one was already burning. We're glad you asked, Shmoopers, because we've found evidence of this exact thing. In 19th century America, it was pretty common practice to deliberately start a fire to stop a fire that was already raging out of control.

The idea was that if the smaller fire burned out all the flammable material before the bigger fire got there, the first fire would be deprived of fuel, and just burn out.

Believe it or not, it worked. The "back-fire" as it was known, would stop the larger, original fire. People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes. Votes: 4. I have been waiting twenty years for someone to say to me: "You have to fight fire with fire" so that I could reply, "That's funny-I always use water.

You can't fight fire with fire, or fear with fear. Votes: 2. Some people fight fire with fire. I've found water to be more effective. Of course you should fight fire with fire.

You should fight everything with fire. People who fight fire with fire end up with only the ashes of their own integrity. My dad used to say 'Always fight fire with fire,' which is probably why he got thrown out of the the fire brigade.

Wars aren't stopped by fighting wars, any more than you can fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water. You fight violence with nonviolence. I'd rather fight structure fires than a wildfire. With a structure fire you know where your flames are, but in the woods it can move anywhere; it can come right up behind you. The method has continued to be used however and foresters now routinely create roads or unplanted areas to act as fire-breaks in woodland that is at risk of fire.

The term 'backfire' is now more often applied to plans that fail in a way that weren't intended. This might be assumed to derive from the faulty ' flash in the pan ' tendency of early flintlock weapons. That isn't the derivation in fact. That way, once the primary fire reaches that area, it will have nothing left to fuel itself. This prevents the primary fire from advancing any further and eventually it goes out. The phrase makes an appearance in print as early as , in the Richmond Enquirer newspaper:.

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