Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun

The actual words appear in the lyrics of Noel Coward’s song Mad Dogs and Englishmen written in 1931. Noel Coward may have been inspired by something that Rudyard Kipling wrote in his novel Kim in 1901, “Only the devils and the English walk to and fro without reason … and we walk as though we were mad or English.”