QOTD category archive

Jules Verne:

Science, my lad, has been built upon many errors; but they are errors which it was good to fall into, for they led to the truth.

Rex Stout, in the voice of Nero Wolfe:

The avoidance of idiocy should be a primary and constant concern of every intelligent person.

Stout, Rex, The Rubber Band (New York: Bantam, 2009), p. 44

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Edmund Burke:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Kevin McCarthy, in the voice of Sherlock Holmes:

It’s always the simple things that are overlooked.

Birch Bayh:

I think that’s most unfortunate about our Democratic system, that you’re confining it to people who are either very wealthy in their own right or have capacity to gain access to large amounts of money.

Mikhail Baryshnikov:

The more injuries you get, the smarter you get.

Aside:

Occasionally I see videos of Baryshnikov’s dancing. I find myself in awe of how easy he made it look.

Gene Kelly once said of Fred Astaire (I’m paraphrasing here) that Astaire made everything look easy, whereas Kelly made everything look hard. Baryshnikov was the Astaire of ballet.

Theodore Roosevelt:

This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country.

Q. E. D.

Francis Lynde, in “The Cloud Busters”:

Swindles are like the poor. They are always with us.

Sinclair Lewis:

I must say I’m not very fond of oratory that’s so full of energy it hasn’t any room for facts.

Hippocrates:

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Q. E. D.

Dashiell Hammett:

If a man says a thing often enough, he is very likely to acquire some sort of faith in it sooner or later.

Aeschines:

The man who is unprincipled in private life will never make a good public servant, nor will one who is of no account at home prove a man of light and leading . . . .

Emily Post:

Manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others. If you have that awareness, you have good manners, no matter what fork you use.

Aside:

Given that we are surrounded by dis coarse discourse, methinks more persons should be reminded of this. “Rudeness” and “honesty” are not synonyms.

Rex Stout, in the voice of Andrew Hibbard:

A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.

Stout, Rex, The League of Frightened Men (New York: Bantam, 1992), p. 13.

Jolene Blalock, in the voice of T’Pol:

There’s a difference between keeping an open mind and believing something because you want it to be true.

Joseph de Maistre:

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

Letitia James:

No person should live in poverty after a life of hard work.

Jane Wagner:

No matter how cynical you become, it’s never enough to keep up.

Petrarch:

Who naught suspects is easily deceived.