Tracing Quotations
Charles F. Kettering? Alec Issigonis? T. R. Quaife? Norris Cotton? Paul H. Gilbert? Jimmy Durante? Ed Byron? Georg Christoph Lichtenberg? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: When the opinions of committee members diverge significantly it becomes difficult to formulate a coherent consensus. This notion has been humorously expressed with a clever adage: A camel is a …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: A Camel Is a Horse That Was Designed by a Committee”
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 …
Will Rogers? Charles F. Kettering? Max Denney? Thomas Jefferson? Robert Heinlein? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: Many complain about the burdensome taxes collected by some governments. Many also complain about the counter-productive and wasteful actions taken by those governments. These criticisms have been combined to produce the following comical remark: Thank heavens we don’t get all …
Continue reading “Thank Goodness We Don’t Get As Much Government As We Pay For”
Yogi Berra? Albert Einstein? Richard Feynman? Benjamin Brewster? Charles F. Kettering? Walter J. Savitch? Jan L. A. van de Snepscheut? Dave Jeske? Chuck Reid? Dear Quote Investigator: The following popular adage balances unsteadily between brilliance and absurdity: In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not. This notion has been attributed …
Charles F. Kettering? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Charles F. Kettering was a prominent inventor and the head of research at General Motors for more than twenty-five years. I believe he said that one couldn’t envision a better tomorrow if one was always thinking about yesterday. I am not sure of the precise phrasing he used. …
Continue reading “You Can’t Have a Better Tomorrow If You Are Thinking About Yesterday All the Time”
Charles F. Kettering? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Charles F. Kettering was a prolific inventor and the head of research for General Motors for many years. During an interview he apparently uttered a line about the future that was simultaneously humorous and insightful: We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to …