They Will Never Agree. They Argue from Different Premises

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 …

It Is the Greatest of All Mistakes, To Do Nothing Because You Can Only Do Little

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. …

Regret for the Things We Did Can Be Tempered by Time; It Is Regret for the Things We Did Not Do That Is Inconsolable

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 …

Missionaries and Cannibals

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 …

You Cannot Reason People Out of Something They Were Not Reasoned Into

Jonathan Swift? Fisher Ames? Lyman Beecher? Jonathan Farr? Samuel Hanson Cox? Sydney Smith? Sidney Smith? Ben Goldacre? Dear 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 someone …

I Wish I Was As Sure of Any One Thing As He is of Everything

Lord Melbourne? William Windham? Benjamin Disraeli? Sydney Smith? William Lamb? Thomas B. Macaulay? Dear Quote Investigator: Each of us has encountered an individual who with highhanded convictions presents an answer to every question. There is a famous witticism aimed at a person of this type: I only wish that I was as cocksure of any …

Cooking Is Like Love. It Should Be Entered Into with Abandon or Not At All

Julia Child? Harriet Van Horne? Sydney Smith? Margaret Grade? Anonymous? Dear Quote Investigator: While reading a cookbook I encountered an amusing quotation about cooking: Cooking is like love — it should be entered into with abandon or not at all. But the authors apparently did not know where it came from and labeled the words:  …