Buckminster Fuller? Mike Vance? Diane Deacon? Daniel Quinn? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Inventor and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller once spoke about the best way to accomplish positive changes. He said that one rarely changes something by fighting it directly. Instead, one should build a new system or model that makes the existing model obsolete. …
Author Archives: quoteresearch
Anecdote Origin: “You Have Come Late To the Office” “Oh! I’ll Make Up For It By Leaving Early”
Charles Lamb? Thomas Love Peacock? William Makepeace Thackeray? Frederick Saunders? Oscar Wilde? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: A humorous anecdote depicts an absurdist interaction between a worker and a supervisor: Supervisor: “You have arrived late for work.”Worker: “Yes, but I will make up for it by leaving early.” This reply has been attributed to the …
Quote Origin: One of the Best Ways To Persuade Others Is With Your Ears — By Listening To Them
Dean Rusk? Jacob Morton Braude? Reader’s Digest? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: If you wish to influence or persuade a person you must attempt to determine their viewpoint. You must be attentive to their needs and desires. Here are two versions of a pertinent saying: (1) One of the best ways to persuade others is …
Quip Origin: In Ancient Times Cats Were Worshipped As Gods; They Have Not Forgotten This
Terry Pratchett? P. G. Wodehouse? Dave Ochs? Dusty Rainbolt? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Cats project an air of superiority and aloofness according to sharp observers. A humorous remark reflects this viewpoint: In ancient times, cats were worshipped as gods. They have never forgotten this. The best-selling English fantasy author Terry Pratchett has received credit …
Simile Origin: The Mind Is Like an Iceberg; It Floats With One-Seventh of Its Bulk Above Water
Sigmund Freud? G. Stanley Hall? Henry H. Goddard? Julia Turner? Percy Dearmer? Carlos María de Heredia? Woods Hutchinson? Question for Quote Investigator: The subconscious mind has an enormous influence on human behavior. A clever simile juxtaposes a mind and an iceberg. The conscious mind corresponds to the part of the iceberg above the waterline, and …
Quote Origin: Give Me a Good Fruitful Error Any Time, Full of Seeds, Bursting with Its Own Corrections
Vilfredo Pareto? John Bartlett? Charles P. Curtis Jr.? Ferris Greenslet? Stephen Jay Gould? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Scientific observations are often inexact. Yet, this inexactitude can be helpful because it facilitates the formulation of theories that generate predictions which are approximately correct. These intermediary theories are valuable because they provide a stepping stone toward …
Adage Origin: An Army of Stags Led by a Lion Is More Formidable Than an Army of Lions Led by a Stag
Plutarch? Chabrias? Julius Caesar? Philip of Macedon? Iphicrates? Napoleon Bonaparte? Daniel Defoe? Question for Quote Investigator: The quality of the members of an organization is important, but the leadership is decisive to achieving success. Here are two versions of a pertinent adage: (1) An army of sheep commanded by a lion is more formidable than …
Quote Origin: Every New Idea Is Just a Mashup or a Remix of One or More Previous Ideas
Austin Kleon? T. S. Eliot? C. E. M. Joad? Ecclesiastes? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The recent creation of artificial intelligence systems that generate text, images, and videos has caused ferocious controversy and motivated several copyright lawsuits. The current generation of popular AI systems are trained using billions of webpages and billions of images. The …
Quote Origin: People Don’t Realize How Much Time and Effort Is Required To Learn To Read. I Have Been At It for Eighty Years, and I Haven’t Reached My Goal
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Carl Sandburg? Ruth Strang? Johann Peter Eckermann? John Oxenford? Henry R. Tedder? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: When the famous German intellectual Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was an octogenarian he spoke to a friend about the effort required to read a text carefully and deeply. He said something like the following: …
Quote Origin: Before We Reach Human-Level AI We Will Have To Reach Cat-Level & Dog-Level AI
Yann LeCun? Demis Hassabis? Bence Ölveczky? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: Progress on artificial intelligence during the 2010s and 2020s has been remarkable. The AlphaFold computer program developed by DeepMind employed machine learning techniques with deep neural networks to successfully predict protein structures. The AlphaGo program used a tree search algorithm together with deep neural …