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Meaning
Origin
Lance certainly did popularise the term but it seems to have been a
colloquial phrase in the southern states of the USA before his
celebrated use of it; for example, this piece is from the Texas
newspaper The Big Spring Herald, December, 1976:
"We would agree with the old Georgia farmer who said his
basic principle was 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it.'"
I would
suggest
that the
notion and
possibly a variant of the phrase may well have been around for some
time before the 1970s, but that the present-day wording of the phrase
began then.
In a few short years, 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' has, even in the UK,
become so established a part of the language as to have become a
clich, which is an unusually quick ascent and descent. Nevertheless,
it's a close call as to whether Lance is now best remembered as
coining that phrase or for William Safire's pithy description of him as
'Carter's broken Lance' after his resignation in 1977, following the
Calhoun National Bank corruption scandal.