One Half of What I Have Told You May Be Proved Untrue. Unfortunately, I Cannot Tell You Which Half

Charles Sidney Burwell? Charles F. Kettering? Helen Clapesattle? Carl Sandburg? Camille Pierre Dadant? Josh Billings? William Osler? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Educators and researchers know that knowledge in fields like science and medicine is continuously growing and changing. Thus, today’s verities become tomorrow’s fallacies. A lecturer once candidly admitted these weaknesses by saying something like …

The One-Eyed Mollusc On the Sea-Bottom Is My Equal in What He and I Know of Star Clusters Not Yet Found

Carl Sandburg? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Humanity takes arrogant pride in the knowledge it has accumulated over the centuries. Yet, it is a paltry amount when compared to the vast treasure troves that remain undiscovered in the uncharted regions of space and time. I roughly recall a saying on this theme that emphasized humility: The …

What Can Be Explained Is Not Poetry

William Butler Yeats? John Butler Yeats? Carl Sandburg? Ezra Pound? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A reader who requests clarification for a poem that is opaque is sometimes met with a rejoinder of this type: If the lines can be explained then the work is not poetry. This notion has been attributed to the Nobel Prize-winning …

If They Turn Their Backs To the Fire, and Get Scorched in the Rear, They’ll Find They Have Got To ‘Sit’ on the ‘Blister’!

Abraham Lincoln? Francis Bicknell Carpenter? Carl Sandburg? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Apparently Abraham Lincoln employed a vividly powerful metaphor when discussing the people’s responsibility during an election. The precise phrasing is uncertain. Here is one version: If the people turn their backs to a fire they will burn their behinds, and they will just have …

Legal Advice: Pound the Facts, Pound the Law, Pound the Table

Carl Sandburg? Alan Dershowitz? Jerome Michael? Jacob J. Rosenblum? Oliver Wendell Holmes? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A few years ago I saw a famous quotation about legal strategy attributed to a celebrity professor:[1] 2007 March 4, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Pounding the Table About Border Episode by Ruben Navarrette Jr., Page E3, Section: Weekly Review, Fort …