If all the "ifs" & "ands" were pots and pans there would be no need for tinkers:
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"printed in 1821, an excerpt translated from a poem entitled Hans Beudix by the German poet Gottfried August Bürger (1747-1794)
Hans Beudix
Are you there, my old fox, with your ifs and your ans?
But I need not remind you, they're not pots and pans,
Else tinkers would starve, (as I learnt from my nurse
Still the answer shall pass, for it might have been worse. "