QOTD category archive

Robert K. Merton:

Scientific research is not conducted in a social vacuum.

Annie Dillard:

Matters of taste are not, it turns out, moral issues.

Krystal Ball:

If you want to understand why something is happening in America just follow the money.

Douglas Adams:

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.

Robert Goldsborough, in the voice of Nero Wolfe:

We do not yet dwell in what I would term a police state, and I hope I do not live to see that eventuality.

Goldsborough, Robert, Stop the Presses (New York: Mysterious Press, 2016), p. 147.

Mandy Patinkin (in the voice of Jason Gideon):

In my experience, evil not a cultural phenomenon. It’s a human one.

Kerry Greenwood, in the voice the poet, Tadeusz Lodz.

There is something macabre about the gramophone. It preserves the voices of the dead, as cherries are preserved in confiture.

Greenwood, Kerry, Urn Burial (Scottsdale, Arizona: Poisoned Pen Press, 2007), p. 91.

Buckminster Fuller:

We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody.

Prabal Guring:

Revolutions always begin fragmented. Then, when united, real change happens . . . .

“Racism in Fashion: How To End It,” New York Times (Sunday, 28 June 2020, Sunday Styles) p. 7.

Fred M. Vinson:

Whatever theoretical merit there may be to the argument that there is a “right” to rebellion against dictatorial governments is without force where the existing structure of the government provides for peaceful and orderly change.

Susan Sontag:

Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear, a sense of the imminence of takeover by aliens — and real diseases are useful material. Epidemic diseases usually elicit a call to ban the entry of foreigners, immigrants. And xenophobic propaganda has always depicted immigrants as bearers of disease . . . .

Plutarch:

It were better to have no opinion of God at all than such a one as is unworthy of him; for the one is only belief – the other contempt.

Lee Trevino:

I never think of yesterday. Can’t do anything about it.

Thomas Dewar:

Minds are like parachutes: they only function when open.

Liu Shahe:

Being misunderstood by someone is vexation. Being misunderstood by everyone is tragedy.

Lillian Hellman:

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.

Francis John McConnell:

We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.

Nick Tosches:

Mortality applies to every aspect of life. The fear of death is the driving fear of life.

Kerry Greenwood:

A moment’s acquaintance was enough to convince her that Mrs. Freeman would not know anything that she did not want to know.

Greenwood, Kerry, The Green Mill Murder (Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, 2007), p. 31.

Lou Ferrigno:

Computers can bully us. A slow and unreliable system will bring even the toughest soul to their knees as they find themselves completely defenseless against the erratic whims of their rogue machine.