Tracing Quotations
Sydney Smith? Punch? Evan Esar? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: A disagreement between two people is sometimes caused by a difference in underlying assumptions. Two individuals arguing from different premises are likely to reach different conclusions. This notion can be comically transformed via a pun on the word “premises” which can mean “assumptions” or “residences”. The …
Continue reading “They Will Never Agree. They Argue from Different Premises”
Edmund Burke? Sydney Smith? Bob Geldof? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Trying to solve an enormous problem can be demoralizing. Each action can only achieve a small amount of progress. The following saying is designed to help maintain morale: Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little. …
Continue reading “It Is the Greatest of All Mistakes, To Do Nothing Because You Can Only Do Little”
Sydney J. Harris? Sydney Smith? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Different types of regret may be experienced when you do something and when you refrain from doing something. A statement on this topic has been attributed to two disparate Sydneys: the English wit Sydney Smith and the U.S. columnist Sydney J. Harris. Would you please determine …
Oscar Wilde? Richard Le Gallienne? Reverend Sydney Smith? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: One of the more outrageous remarks attributed to the famous wit Oscar Wilde concerned missionaries, cannibals, and the supply of food. Did Wilde really make this facetious remark? Quote Investigator: Oscar Wilde died in 1900, and the earliest evidence located by QI appeared …
Jonathan Swift? Fisher Ames? Lyman Beecher? Jonathan Farr? Samuel Hanson Cox? Sydney Smith? Sidney Smith? Ben Goldacre? Question for Quote Investigator: Jonathan Swift was a prominent literary figure who authored “Gulliver’s Travels” and “A Modest Proposal”. He has been credited with an elegant thought about the limitations of persuasion via logical argument: You cannot reason …