Tracing Quotations
John Maynard Keynes? Daniel Dennett? Isaiah Berlin? Eloise Jarvis McGraw? Herman Melville? T. H. Pear? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Are our thoughts composed of basic elements? Do we contemplate words, pictures, video snippets, or perception patterns while cogitating? I was reminded of this classic epistemological question by recent advancements in the field of artificial …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: “Do You Think In Words or Pictures?” “I Think In Thoughts””
John Maynard Keynes? George Patton? Samuel Harries Daddow? Benjamin Bannan? Henry Smith? S. H. Monell? Thomas Brackett Reed? Thomas Alan Goldsborough? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: A brilliant figure of speech has been employed to describe the performance of a futile or counter-productive task. Here are two versions: (1) You cannot push on a string. (2) …
Mark Twain? Baltasar Gracian? John Maynard Keynes? Norman Angell? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: An energetic liar can confuse, mislead, and deceive people. Yet, in many cases, that same liar is unable to reverse the deception. Hoodwinked people embrace their misperceptions. Here is a pertinent adage: It’s easier to fool people than to convince them …
John Maynard Keynes? Norman Angell? Carter Field? Lionel Robbins? Malcolm W. Bingay? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: With time and effort it is possible to bamboozle people, i.e., to fool or mislead them. Unfortunately, this process of deception can be so thorough that it is impossible to debamboozle them, i.e., to convince them of the …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: It Is Easier to Bamboozle People Than It Is To Unbamboozle Them”
John Maynard Keynes? Paul Bareau? John Paul Getty? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The relationship between bankers and borrowers is symbiotic and occasionally counter-intuitive. Here is a pertinent adage: If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem; if you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem. The prominent economist John Maynard Keynes …
John Maynard Keynes? Josiah Stamp? Ernest Brown? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: The most outrageous quotation about education that I have ever heard has been attributed to the famous economist John Maynard Keynes. Here are three versions: 1) Education is the inculcation of the incomprehensible into the ignorant by the incompetent. 2) Education: the inculcation of …
John Maynard Keynes? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Quotations that were supposedly spoken by famous people shortly before death are notoriously unreliable. I heard that the prominent economist John Maynard Keynes on his deathbed was asked whether he had any regrets, and he said something like: I should have drunk more champagne. I only wish I …
Continue reading “My Only Regret Is That I Have Not Drunk More Champagne In My Life”
John Maynard Keynes? A. Gary Shilling? Harold R. Evensky? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The gyrations of financial markets can be startling. You may have unassailable information indicating that a stock is overpriced or underpriced, but you can still lose money because the market price may not accurately reflect the underlying verities for years. Here …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: The Market Can Remain Irrational Longer Than You Can Remain Solvent”
John Maynard Keynes? Milton Friedman? A. Gary Shilling? Albert J. Hettinger, Jr.? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Forbes magazine has a fascinating searchable database called “Thoughts On The Business of Life” that contains “more than 10,000 quotes.” The following saying interests me, but the database doesn’t appear to include citations so I am not sure if …
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?”