Tracing Quotations
Steven Tyler? Keble Howard? George E. Waring Jr.? Henry Stanley Haskins? Robert Heinlein? Lord Chesterfield? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The following adage celebrates enthusiasm and exuberance: Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. This saying has been attributed to the rock star Steven Tyler and science fiction author Robert Heinlein. Would you please help me …
Continue reading “Adage Origin: Whatever Is Worth Doing Is Worth Overdoing”
Arthur C. Clarke? Tobias Dantzig? Robert Heinlein? Jerome Agel? Harold Faber? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The science fiction luminary Arthur C. Clarke once said something like: the best way to find the limits of the possible is to go beyond them into the impossible. I have seen several different versions of this remark. Would …
Will Rogers? Charles F. Kettering? Max Denney? Thomas Jefferson? Robert Heinlein? Anonymous? Question for 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 …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Thank Goodness We Don’t Get As Much Government As We Pay For”
T. H. White? Robert Heinlein? W. H. Auden? Murray Gell-Mann? Friedrich Schiller? Weare Holbrook? Ronald Storrs? Harry Lindsay? Gordon Daniel Conant? Gerhart H. Seger? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: The following societal principle has been called totalitarian, authoritarian, fascist, and dictatorial. Here are two versions: Everything which is not forbidden is compulsory. Everything which is …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Everything Which Is Not Compulsory Is Forbidden”
Robert Heinlein? L. Ron Hubbard? Catherine Crook de Camp? L. Sprague de Camp? Brian W. Aldiss? John Brunner? Apocryphal? Question for Quote Investigator: The famous science fiction author Robert Heinlein apparently contended that there were only three basic templates for stories. One template was “The Brave Little Tailor”, a German fairy tale about a clever …
Frederik Pohl? Robert Heinlein? Isaac Asimov? Connie Willis? Ed Bryant? George Zebrowski? Ben Bova? Robert J. Sawyer? Sam Moskowitz? Question for Quote Investigator: Predicting the primary effects of a new technology is difficult but feasible. Anticipating all the secondary effects is nearly impossible. Here are two statements of a viewpoint that has achieved popularity amongst …
Robert Heinlein? Emma D. E. N. Southworth? Wilfrid S. Bronson? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Science fiction luminary Robert Heinlein employed the following phrase in two of his novels: That’s the moose’s problem. The phrase seems to mean: That problem should be dealt with by someone else. Would you please explore the origin of this …
Mark Twain? Robert Heinlein? Paul Dickson? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Teaching a pig to sing is a futile task that aggravates the porcine student according to a popular saying. Luminary Mark Twain and science fiction author Robert Heinlein have received credit for this adage. Would you please determine the accurate ascription and the original …
Robert Heinlein? Napoleon Bonaparte? Ayn Rand? David Hume? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe? Robert J. Hanlon? Arthur Cushman McGiffert? William James Laidlay? Ernst Haeckel? Thomas F. Woodlock? Nick Diamos? Question for Quote Investigator: It is easy to impute hostility to the actions of others when a situation is actually unclear. A popular insightful adage attempts to …
Milton Friedman? Robert Heinlein? Robert G. Ingersoll? Michael Montague? Walter Morrow? John Madden? Harley L. Lutz? Pierre Dos Utt? Leonard P. Ayres? Jake Falstaff? Herman Fetzer? Anonymous? Question for Quote Investigator: Today many goods and services are available for free especially via the internet. However, the true cost is usually not zero. Subsidies, indirect costs, …
Continue reading “Quote Origin: There Ain’t No Such Thing as a Free Lunch — TANSTAAFL”