Curious Quotations
Anonymous quotations
- "Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its while life believing that it is stupid."
[This is quote is often attributed to Albert Einstein but there is little evidence to suggest that he every wrote or spoke there words. Several allegorical stories on a similar
there have been published, dating back to the 19th century. (See http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/06/fish-climb/ for more info.)]
- "If the brain were so simple that we could understand it, we would be so simple we couldn't."
[This is quoted by George Edgin Pugh in The Biological Origin of Human Values (1978) and attributed to his father, although its origin is uncertain.]
- Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.
- If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
- What if there were no such thing as a hypothetical situation?
- Before we put the motion 'that the motion be now put', should we not first put the motion "that the motion 'that the motion be now put' be now put?"
[Chairman of a meeting of the Society of Logicians]
- The more you know, the less you think you know.
See Socrates.
- "These mines must be stored with the bottom at the top. For clarification, the top of the container has been labelled bottom."
[Admiralty instruction issued during the Second World War. Taken from, Beaurocrats - How to annoy them. By R T Fishall.]
- "Do not turn upside down."
[Warning on Tesco's Tiramisu dessert - printed on bottom.]
- There are two kinds of people in the world: those who divide the world into two kinds of people and those who don't.
- There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count and those who can't.
- The world is divided into two classes: people who say "The world is divided into two classes", and people who say: The world is divided into two classes: people who say: "The world is divided into two classes", and people who say: The world is divided into two classes: people who say "The world is divided into two classes", and people who say: The world is divided into two classes: people who say "The world is divided into two classes", and people who say:
The world is …
- The nature of God is a circle of which the centre is everywhere and the circumference is nowhere.
[Said to have been traced to a lost treatise of Empedocles; quoted in the 'Roman de la Rose' and by St Bonaventura in 'Itinerarius Mentis in Deum'.]
- Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
- In the next sentence, the number of occurences of 0 is 1,
of 1 is 7, of 2 is 4, of 3 is 1, of 4 is 1, of 5 is 1,
of 6 is 1, of 7 is 1, of 8 is 2, and of 9 is 1.
In the previous sentence, the number of occurences of 0 is 1,
of 1 is 8, of 2 is 2, of 3 is 1, of 4 is 2, of 5 is 1,
of 6 is 1, of 7 is 2, of 8 is 1, and of 9 is 1.
[For more information about self-referential sentences click HERE.]
- Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
- The average human has about one breast and one testicle.
From Statistics 101.
- Women who want to be equal to men have no ambition.
- "Everyone loves to argue with Milton, particularly when he's not there."
Saying at Chicago University, about the economist Milton Friedman who lectured there.
- Good teachers are costly, but bad teachers cost more.
- There are 10 sorts of people in the world: people who understand binary, and people who don't.
- Who is more busy than he who hath least to do?
17th Century proverb
- You never know what's going to happen yesterday.
Russian saying
- Five gallons are as easy to make as one, and last nearly twice as long.
Quoted in A Sting in the Tale by Dave Goulson, taken from an old wine making recipe book.
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"There goes the man that writt a book that neither he nor anybody else understands."
[Said to have been remarked by a student as Isaac Newton walked by. The book he was referring to was Newton's Principia. This quote is cited in "Isaac Newton: And the Scientific Revolution" by Gale E. Christianson, OUP 1996.]
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