QOTD category archive

Tom Dooley:

I’m not always right, but I’m never in doubt.

Helen Thomas:

The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that’s what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy.

Kerry Greenwood:

“But you don’t believe in magic,” murmured Phryne.

“But I do believe in belief,” he answered.

Greenwood, Kerry, Death before Wicket (Scottsdale, AZ: Poisoned Pen Press, 2008), p. 106.

George Marshall:

The only way human beings can win a war is to prevent it.

William R. Alger:

Most men give advice by the bucket, but take it by the grain.

Robert Goldsborough, in the voice of Archie Goodwin:

I was reminded by the look I got that being right does not guarantee popularity.

Goldsborough, Robert, Fade to Black (New York: Mysterious Press, 1990), p. 174

Epicurus:

If God listened to the prayers of men, all men would quickly have perished: for they are forever praying for evil against one another.

Oscar Levant:

There is a thin line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line.

Kerry Greenwood:

Bert, in his reflective moments, considered that if heaven didn’t have a well-appointed pub where a man could sit down over a beer for a yarn with the other angels, then he didn’t want to go there.

Greenwood, Kerry, Raisins and Almonds (Scottsdale, AZ, Poisoned Pen Press, 2007). p. 161.

Hugh Marlowe, in the voice of Ellery Queen:

Hate is made by fear.

(Warning: The link opens the radio episode entitled “The Three Frogs” at mysteryshows.com.)

Julian Huxley:

Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.

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.