Tracing Quotations
Thomas Edison? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Ebooks have surged in popularity since Amazon introduced the Kindle and Apple released the iPad. Some futurists believe that paper books will be phased out and replaced by electronic books. But I came across a fascinating false prediction made by the most important innovator of the previous century: Books …
Continue reading “Books Will Soon Be Obsolete in the Schools”
William Gibson? Anonymous? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: I work at Google, and a colleague of mine who leads our Search Education efforts pointed out your site as a great resource for people learning to search smarter. I love the site! There is a quotation credited to the influential and award-winning science fiction author William Gibson …
Continue reading “The Future Has Arrived — It’s Just Not Evenly Distributed Yet”
Walter Reuther? Henry Ford II? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: An article on the Economist website recently told an extraordinary anecdote about automation. The rivals in the tale were two titans in the world of automobile manufacturing who took a tour of a newly built and highly-automated factory. The forceful executive, Henry Ford II, and the …
Thomas Friedman? Dan Montano? Arthur M. Blank? Sue Tabor? Herb Caen? Christopher McDougall? Roger Bannister? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Last year I saw a motivational poster with a portrait of a lion. The text was a fable about lions and gazelles, and the title was something like the “The Key to Survival.” Paraphrasing: To survive …
John Maynard Keynes? Paul Samuelson? Winston Churchill? Joan Robinson? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: John Maynard Keynes was an enormously influential economist, but some of his detractors complained that the opinions he expressed tended to change over the years. Once during a high-profile government hearing a critic accused him of being inconsistent, and Keynes reportedly answered …
Continue reading “When the Facts Change, I Change My Mind. What Do You Do, Sir?”
Warren Buffett? Michael Wolff? Amarillo Slim? Poker Proverb? Whispering Saul? Dear Quote Investigator: There is a quotation I have seen in several books and periodicals aimed at investors. Here is one version: If you have been in a poker game for a while, and you still don’t know who the patsy is, you’re the patsy. …
Continue reading “Look Around the Poker Table; If You Can’t See the Sucker, You’re It”
Ogden Nash? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Jeopardy is my favorite game show, and I recently watched in amazement as an IBM computer named Watson beat the two best human players in the history of the trivia tournament. I was reminded of the classic one-line observation made by the brilliantly humorous poet Ogden Nash: Progress might …
Continue reading “Progress May Have Been All Right Once, But It Went On Too Long”
George S. Kaufman? Eddie Fisher? Clifton Fadiman? Dick Cavett? Dear Quote Investigator: Many, many years ago I saw an old clip on TV of George S. Kaufman and he was replying to a question submitted by a listener/viewer/audience member. For the sake of example let’s say it was a woman complaining about her husband’s smoking …
Continue reading “Combining the Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar Telescopes Still Won’t Be Enough”
Paul Ehrlich? Alexander Pope? Senator Soaper? Bill Vaughan? Agatha Christie? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: I am reading your blog and that shows I am not a Luddite, but computers can be very exasperating. One of my favorite quotations on this topic is the following: To err is human, but to really foul things up you …
Continue reading “To Err is Human; To Really Foul Things Up Requires a Computer”
Arthur F. Burns? William McChesney Martin? G. William Miller? Paul A. Volcker? Dear Quote Investigator: The U.S. economy has experienced two large bubbles in recent years in technology stocks and in real estate. These gyrations in the market reminded me of an old comment from a previous director of the Federal Reserve. He said his …
Continue reading “I Take the Punch Bowl Away Just When the Party is Getting Good”