Tracing Quotations
Voltaire? Spider-Man? Winston Churchill? Theodore Roosevelt? Franklin D. Roosevelt? Lord Melbourne? John Cumming? Hercules G. R. Robinson? Henry W. Haynes? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: There is a popular saying about the relationship between ascendancy and obligation: With great power comes great responsibility. This expression has been attributed to two very different sources: Voltaire and …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility”
Samuel Goldwyn? William Pine? William Thomas? Louis B. Mayer? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Some recent Hollywood action movies begin with an explosion and follow with a series of frenetic semi-coherent set pieces. The script writers seem to be channeling the late movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn’s funny advice for creating a blockbuster: We need a …
Mark Twain? Bill Nye? Mr. Walkup? Eli Perkin? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Recently, a business website published an article about investing in gold and mining equities. The columnist began with a very funny and facetious remark attributed to Mark Twain: A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar standing on …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: A Gold Mine Is a Hole in the Ground with a Liar at the Top”
Ralph Waldo Emerson? Harrison Emmerson? Harrington Emerson? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: It is always possible to attempt to solve a problem by clumsily trying a variety of methods, but it is better to select an appropriate technique based on principled understanding. The following statement has been attributed to the famous philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson: …
Mark Twain? Lord Byron? G. K. Chesterton? Edward Bellamy? Humphrey Bogart? Leo Rosten? Tom Clancy? Question for Quote Investigator: There is a wonderful quotation by Mark Twain about the implausibility of truth versus fiction. Here are four versions: 1) Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense. 2) It’s …
Herman Melville? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The major literary figure Herman Melville was famous for envisioning an archetypal beast and a fateful battle in “Moby-Dick; or, The Whale” published in 1851. Reportedly, Melville wrote an article that extolled creativity with the following assertion: It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Better To Fail in Originality than To Succeed in Imitation”
Jonathan Swift? Fisher Ames? Lyman Beecher? Jonathan Farr? Samuel Hanson Cox? Sydney Smith? Sidney Smith? Ben Goldacre? Question for Quote Investigator: Jonathan Swift was a prominent literary figure who authored “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Proposal”. He has been credited with an elegant thought about the limitations of persuasion via logical argument: You cannot reason …
John Locke? Lu Xun? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The following statement appears on many websites: As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears. The words are usually attributed to the English philosopher John Locke or the Chinese writer Lu Xun. I have been unable to find a citation. …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: As People Walk This Way Again and Again, a Path Appears”
Tallulah Bankhead? Lillian Hellman? Dashiell Hammett? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The most obtuse quotation I know of was uttered by the actress Tallulah Bankhead whose erratic behavior caused Dashiell Hammett, the well-known author of popular detective novels, to complain about her drug use. Bankhead reportedly defended herself with the following parodic remark: I tell …
Arthur Schopenhauer? Albert Szent-Györgyi? Erwin Schrödinger? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: There is a brilliant remark about scientific, artistic, and intellectual progress. Here are four versions: Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and think what nobody has thought. Genius is seeing what everyone else sees and thinking what no one else has …