You are forgetting the great part about quotes: "The thing about quotes on the internet is that you cannot confirm their validity."-- Abraham Lincoln Rarely do people question the reality of the who said what where and when of a "quote". It is an assertion in the fiction of human reality that we create to solidify our place in the world.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/04/universe-einstein/ hi psulli, I just happened across this great website while seeking to have a quote verified. I was looking up Einstein's alleged quote "only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not that sure about the universe." The quote investigator dug quite deep.
nicely put, Psulli - I checked Lincoln's quote and found a reference to it in a footnote to the Emancipation Proclamation and retweeted in the Gettysberg Address 10 months later. by the way, I check original sources of quotations. Secondary sources tend to have multiple variants.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education" - Mark Twain -- the Quote Investigator just read this page and informed me that this was probably not said by Mark Twain but was maybe only attributed to Mark Twain in a 1907 advertisement by Daisy Air Rifles.
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/09/25/schooling-vs-educati... He's done an amazing investigation. Oh well. Mark Twain was certainly the kind of guy who would have said it.
Since the fine article didn't really answer the question, I'll try. We love quotations because they are distilled wisdom. Here's one of my favourites: A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -Robert A. Heinlein
Hi Brian, I posted your quotation on my blog (w/ reference to hubski as always) and you got this response from "Nadreck": RAH turned out some beauties. I was a passionate devourer of his juvenile SF novels. Two of my favourites are: Never try and teach a pig to sing: it's a waste of time, and it annoys the pig.
--Robert A. Heinlein Time Enough for Love Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe and not make messes in the house.
--Lazarus Long, "Time Enough for Love", (Robert A. Heinlein)