Tracing Quotations
George Orwell? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: The naïve extrapolation of current events leads to faulty predictions. Apparently, the influential English novelist and essayist George Orwell made a point of this type regarding the overestimation of victors in recent battles. Too often people view ruthless contemporary winners as invincible and are unable to recognize flaws. Would …
Continue reading “Whoever Is Winning at the Moment Will Always Seem To Be Invincible”
George Orwell? Coco Chanel? Mae West? Ingrid Bergman? Albert Camus? Abraham Lincoln? Edwin M. Stanton? Lucius E. Chittenden? Albert Schweitzer? Maurice Chevalier? William H. Seward? Edward Lee Hawk? William Shakspeare? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A person’s true character can be deduced by the careful study of the face according to believers in physiognomy. This notion …
George Orwell? Eric Arthur Blair? Bernard Crick? Sonia Orwell? Norman Lear? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: George Orwell apparently once made a fascinating comment about the essence of liberty. Here are two versions: Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. If liberty means anything at all it means the …
George Orwell? Jan Kalina? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A joke which ridicules an oppressive institution can help to undermine it. George Orwell once wrote about the subversive capabilities of humor and stated that a trenchant quip was analogous to a “tiny revolution”. Would you please help me to find a citation? Quote Investigator: In 1945 …
Bertrand Russell? George Orwell? Arthur Koestler? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Humanity faces many existential dangers: hydrogen bombs, bioweapons, asteroid impacts, nanoplagues, and artificial intelligence. Yet, most of these dangers were created by humankind, and all can be ameliorated by wise decisions. The British philosopher Bertrand Russell once said something like: The question is how to …
Continue reading “The Difficulty Is To Persuade the Human Race To Acquiesce in Its Own Survival”
George Orwell? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Lately, I have been seeing the following quotation about warfare attributed to the famous political writer George Orwell: War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it. I am skeptical of this attribution. Is this a genuine statement from …
George Orwell? V. G. Venturini? David Hoffman? Charlotte Despard? Antonio Gramsci? Anonymous? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: In 1949 George Orwell described a nightmarish future in his classic dystopian novel 1984. There is a popular quotation that is supposed to be contained within this work, but it is not there. Here are three versions: Maybe …
George Orwell? Alfred Harmsworth? William Randolph Hearst? L. E. Edwardson? Robert W. Sawyer? Mark Rhea Byers? Brian R. Roberts? Malcolm Muggeridge? Katharine Graham? Lord Rothermere? Lord Northcliffe? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I have been trying to trace a popular saying about journalism which can be expressed in several ways. Here are four examples to show …
Continue reading “News Is What Somebody Does Not Want You To Print. All the Rest Is Advertising”
George Orwell? Richard Grenier? Rudyard Kipling? Winston Churchill? John Le Carré? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The brilliant writer George Orwell authored two of the most powerful and acclaimed political books of the last century: 1984 and Animal Farm. The saying that interests me is usually attributed to him, and there are two popular versions: …