Tracing Quotations
Enrico Fermi? Bernt Øksendal? Earl C. Kelley? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: My favorite quotation should resonate with anyone who has tried to master a difficult subject: We have not succeeded in answering all our problems. The answers we have found only serve to raise a whole set of new questions. In some ways we …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Confused on a Higher Level and About More Important Things”
Otto von Bismarck? John Godfrey Saxe? Claudius O. Johnson? Dear Quote Investigator: The quotation of Otto von Bismarck about laws and sausages has been a favorite of mine for years. I found several versions using Google, and here are two: Laws are like sausages. It’s better not to see them being made. To retain respect …
Continue reading “Laws are Like Sausages. Better Not to See Them Being Made”
Napoleon Bonaparte? Haley Barbour? Woodrow Wilson? Question for Quote Investigator: I saw Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi on television recently and he recited a quotation that he attributed to Napoleon: You know, Napoleon said ‘Never interfere with an enemy while he’s in the process of destroying himself.’ Is this an accurate quote? Could you investigate …
Carl Sandburg? Alan Dershowitz? Jerome Michael? Jacob J. Rosenblum? Oliver Wendell Holmes? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: A few years ago I saw a famous quotation about legal strategy attributed to a celebrity professor: Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz shares with his students a strategy for successfully defending cases. If the facts are on …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Legal Advice: Pound the Facts, Pound the Law, Pound the Table”
Plato? Philo of Alexandria? Ian MacLaren? John Watson? This blog post is based on a question that was posed at the wonderful blog used by the quotation expert Fred Shapiro who is the editor of one of the best reference works in this area: The Yale Book of Quotations. Fred Shapiro’s posts appear on the …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Be Kind; Everyone You Meet is Fighting a Hard Battle”
Mark Twain? Nyrum Reynolds? Hiram Runnels? Andrew Jackson? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I sometimes have difficulty spelling words correctly. But I take comfort in the magnificent statement attributed to Mark Twain: I don’t give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way. Actually, I used to take comfort in …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: No Respect for a Man Who Can Spell a Word Only One Way”
Charles Darwin? J.B.S. Haldane? Stephen Gould? Apocryphal? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I have been studying rain forests and came across the following passage in a New York Times article: Charles Darwin surmised that the Creator must be inordinately fond of beetles: the earth is home to some 30 million different species of them. The …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: The Creator Has an Inordinate Fondness for Beetles”
Thomas Friedman? Lawrence Summers? Jack Kemp? Bill Creech? Aircraft Maintenance Chief? Thomas Peters? Nancy Austin? Dear Quote Investigator: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has used the following catch phrase several times: No one washes a rented car. I think this saying encapsulates an important idea. There is little incentive to wash or maintain a …
John Adams? Tobias Smollett? Alain-René Lesage? Question for Quote Investigator: In class last year we studied the Boston Massacre and our history book said that John Adams, who later became the second President of the United States, defended the soldiers who shot and killed the protesters. During the defense Adams used the famous phrase: Facts …
Omar Bradley? Albert Einstein? Young Army Lieutenant? Walter Winchell? Joe Laitin? James W. Fulbright? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a great quotation about the type of weapons that will be used in World War IV. The words are both funny and chilling, and every time I have seen the saying it has been attributed to …