Tracing Quotations
Florence Nightingale? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Florence Nightingale was one of the great humanitarians of the nineteenth century. She was the founder of modern nursing, and her work as an educator, administrator, and activist saved many lives. Her calls for urgent action often elicited excuses, but she continued to move forward. She reportedly said the …
Continue reading “I Attribute My Success to This:—I Never Gave or Took an Excuse”
Theodor Seuss Geisel? Ludwig Jacobowski? Christopher Roche? Gabriel García Márquez? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: If you have ever been part of a group with camaraderie that accomplished some worthwhile goal then you know about the sadness experienced when the group finally dissolved. Here are two versions of a saying that offers consolation: Don’t cry because …
Continue reading “Don’t Cry Because It’s Over; Smile Because It Happened”
Buckminster Fuller? Thomas Fuller? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The prominent inventor and author Buckminster Fuller has been linked to an uncharacteristic quotation: Those who play with the devil’s toys will be brought by degrees to wield his sword. Would you please determine whether he wrote and said this remark? Quote Investigator: QI has located no …
Daniel J. Boorstin? Stephen Hawking? Henry Thomas Buckle? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Widely accepted false beliefs can hinder progress and new discoveries. For example, the mistaken belief that heavier-than-air flying machines were impossible or impractical deterred requisite financing and investigation. This thought has been expressed as follows: The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance; …
Mark Twain? H. L. Mencken? Peter Drucker? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A popular saying presents a vivid warning about apparent solutions which are too good to be true. Here are four versions: There is a solution to every problem: simple, quick, and wrong. For every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat—and wrong. …
Sherlock Holmes? Arthur Conan Doyle? J. Murray Moore? Franklin P. Adams? P. G. Wodehouse? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: When Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous detective Sherlock Holmes was explaining to his good friend John A. Watson the nature of his latest deduction he supposedly employed the well-known phrase: Elementary, my dear Watson. I was astonished …
Agatha Christie? Alec de Montmorency? Sam Farver? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Agatha Christie remains one of the most popular writers in history. She constructed engagingly clever and innovative mysteries as a novelist and playwright. Would you please research a humorous remark that has often been attributed to her? She was married to an archaeologist …
Continue reading “An Archaeologist Is the Best Husband a Woman Can Have”
Henry Kissinger? Delmore Schwartz? Sigmund Freud? Virginia McManus? Mark Harris? Buck Henry? Joseph Heller? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A family of sayings with a humorous edge was popular in the 1960s and 1970s. Here were two versions: 1) Even a paranoid can have enemies. 2) Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you. …
Robert Frost? Isaac Asimov? Kathleen Norris? Charles Swain Thomas? Robert Shafer? George Gallup? Dear Quote Investigator: The renowned poet laureate Robert Frost emphasized the importance of self-education. Also, the preternaturally productive science and science fiction writer Isaac Asimov extolled self-education. Here are two quotations on this topic: 1) The only education worth anything is self-education. …
Continue reading “Self-Education Is the Only Kind of Education There Is”
Napoléon Bonaparte? Voltaire? Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle? Claude Adrien Helvétius? Wendell Phillips? Ralph Waldo Emerson? Dear Quote Investigator: A popular skeptical viewpoint about history can be expressed in a few different ways: 1) What is history but a fable agreed upon? 2) History is a set of lies agreed upon. 3) History is a …