Quote Origin: Chess Is As Elaborate a Waste of Human Intelligence as You Could Find Anywhere Outside an Advertising Agency

Raymond Chandler? Philip Marlowe? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: A famous writer of detective novels apparently described chess as an enormous waste of human intelligence. My memory is not precise. He may have been talking about poker instead of chess. Would you please explore this topic? Reply from Quote Investigator: Raymond Chandler’s 1953 novel “The …

Quote Origin: A Baby Learns To Speak in Two Years, But It Takes a Lifetime To Learn To Keep Quiet

Ernest Hemingway? Mark Twain? Luke McLuke? Lydia DeVilbiss? Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.? Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.? Frederick B. Wilcox? Abigail Van Buren? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: While searching the twitter database I encountered the following two similar jokes: (1) Humans need two years to learn to speak and sixty years to learn to shut …

Quote Origin: An Intellectual Is Someone Who Has Found Something More Interesting Than Sex

Aldous Huxley? Katharine Whitehorn? Edgar Wallace? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: A widely reported psychological study asserted that people experienced erotic thoughts many times a day on average. Intellectuals, according to a comical definition, are able to free their minds sufficiently from carnal pursuits to consider other subjects of superior interest. The well-known author of …

Quote Origin: What Is a Highbrow? He Is a Man Who Has Found Something More Interesting Than Women

Edgar Wallace? Aldous Huxley? Paul Larmer? Russell Lynes? Katharine Whitehorn? Wayne C. Booth? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Human thoughts are often focused on relationships and intimacy. Yet, other cerebral pursuits may predominate when the mind shifts focus. Here are three closely related versions of a humorous definition: The first two versions are presented from …

Quote Origin: Secrecy Is the Art of Telling a Thing To Only One Person At a Time

University of Oxford? Theresa Russell? Edna Worthley Underwood? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: I have been told with the highest level of confidentiality that the following comical definition has been employed at the University of Oxford: Secret: You may tell it to only one person at a time. Would you please explore the provenance of …

Quote Origin: If Builders Built Buildings the Way Programmers Wrote Programs, Then the First Woodpecker That Came Along Would Destroy Civilization

Gerald Weinberg? Conrad Schneiker? Arthur Bloch? Clifford Stoll? Dennis Hall? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Computer programs are not resilient. Small errors can cause a program to malfunction. In the 1960s a spacecraft bound for Venus quickly veered off course because a single character in the guidance program was accidentally omitted. This dangerous situation necessitated …

Quote Origin: Absence of Evidence Is Not Evidence of Absence

Carl Sagan? Martin Rees? William Wright? William Housman? W. J. Sollas? Dugald Bell? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The existence or non-existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life is a highly contentious subject. Some thinkers who are open to the possibility of interstellar aliens also believe that the current evidence is inadequate; hence, they advocate using radio …

Quote Origin: Hurt People Hurt People

Rick Warren? Will Bowen? Yehuda Berg? Charles Eads? Oprah Winfrey? Helen Boyd? Doug Manning? Emotions Anonymous? Barbara Johnson? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: People who have been hurt or damaged in life sometimes respond by striking out and hurting the people who are around them. A concise adage expresses this viewpoint: Hurt people hurt people. …

Quote Origin: Behold the Turtle. He Makes Progress Only When His Neck Is Out

James B. Conant? Atomic Scientist? Anonymous Cartoonist? Leslie Groves? G. B. Carter? P. C. Keith? Question for Quote Investigator: Making headway in life requires taking significant risks. This thought has been presented with a homespun aquatic analogy. Here are three versions: This saying has been credited to James B. Conant, a chemist who was the …

Quote Origin: The Mystery of Human Existence Lies Not In Just Staying Alive, But In Finding Something To Live For

Fyodor Dostoevsky? Andrew H. MacAndrew? Constance Garnett? Max Tegmark? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The famous Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky contended that simply staying alive would not make a person content. A person must find something to live for. Strictly speaking, this viewpoint was articulated by a character in a story by Dostoevsky and not …