1363) Middle age is when you've met so many people that every new person you meet reminds you of someone else.

Ogden Nash
"Let's Not Climb the Washington Monument Tonight"
Saturday Evening Post (7/5/1947)
republished in Versus (1949) [WQ]
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (10/2/1995)

1364) Due to circumstances beyond my control, I am master of my fate and captain of my soul.

Ashleigh Brilliant
quoted by Douglas R. Hofstadter in
"Self-Referential Sentences: A Follow-Up" in
Metamagical Themas (1985)
posted by stoneb [IQM] (10/5/1995)

[Note: cf. #1253 Jong and #1275 Updike.]

1365) [N]ever get into rock fights with kids who have ugly faces, because they have nothing to lose!

Paul Zindel
The Pigman and Me (1992)

[Note: Often seen as an unattributed quote in the form: Never get into fights with ugly people because they have nothing to lose.]

1366) Auditors are people who come onto the field after the battle is over and bayonet the wounded. The lawyers follow the auditors and strip the bodies.

unknown
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (10/4/1995)

1367) The map is not the territory. [...] The word is not the thing.

Alfred Korzybski
"A Non-Aristotelian System and its Necessity
for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics,"
American Mathematical Society (12/28/1931)
reprinted in Science and Sanity (1933) [WP]
posted by Roberto Hartman [IQM] (10/4/1995)

[Note: Also, the picture is not the person, but in the absence of Korzybski in the flesh you can get a pretty good idea of what he looked like (and pehaps even - dare one say it? - some small insight into his character) by viewing his photograph — and you can get from Syracuse to Buffalo with the map, too.]

1352) "How do you know so much about everything?" was asked of a very wise and intelligent man; and the answer was "By never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions as to anything of which I was ignorant."

John Abbott (attributed)
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (10/2/1995)

1353) If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the A-B-C of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems.

Edward Hodnett (attributed)
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (10/2/1995)

1354) No question is so difficult to answer as that to which the answer is obvious.

George Bernard Shaw (attributed)
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (10/2/1995)

[Note: This quote is also attributed to Karl Otto von Schonhausen Bismarck, from a "Declaration to the Prussian House of Delegates."]

1355) It's better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

James Thurber
"The Scotty Who Knew Too Much"
The New Yorker (2/18/1939) [WQ]
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (10/2/1995)

1356) An educated man is one who has finally discovered that there are some questions to which nobody has the answer.

unknown
posted by Todd McMasters [IQM] (10/2/1995)

1357) Brilliance is typically the act of an individual, but incredible stupidity can usually be traced to an organization.

Jon Louis Bentley
More Programming Pearls: Confessions of a Coder (1988)
posted by Gerard Gobillard [IQM] (10/4/1995)

1358) Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

Arthur Schopenhauer
"Our Relations to Others" in
Essays [B16]
Kathy White, personal e-mail (10/5/1995)

1359) If in any discussion or conversation, another man shows more knowledge, greater love of truth, a sounder judgment, better understanding than we, or generally exhibits intellectual qualities which cast ours into the shade, we can at once annul his superiority and our own shallowness, and in our turn be superior to him, by being insulting and offensive. For rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses intellect. If our opponent does not care for our mode of attack, and will not answer still more rudely [...] we are the victors and honor is on our side. Truth, knowledge, understanding, intellect, wit, must beat a retreat and leave the field to this almighty insolence.

Arthur Schopenhauer
"Position, or a Man’s Place
in the Estimation of Others"
The Wisdom of Life (1901)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (10/4/1995)

1360) No plan can prevent a stupid person from doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time--but a good plan should keep a concentration from forming.

Charles E. Wilson (widely attributed)
former CEO of General Motors
and Secretary of Defense
posted by George Osner [ISQ] (10/4/1995)

[Note: Wilson was the man who is supposed to have said "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." In actuality, during hearings in the Senate Armed Services Committee for his confirmation as Secretary of Defense, Wilson was asked if he would be able to make a decision adverse to the interests of General Motors. He responded:

"Yes, sir, I could. I cannot conceive of one because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa. The difference did not exist. Our company is too big. It goes with the welfare of the country." (1/15/1953) [WP] & [NGF]]

1361) The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize the ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty -- some most unsure, some nearly sure, none absolutely certain.

Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure -- that it is possible to live and not know. But I don't know whether everyone realizes that this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle. Permit us to question -- to doubt, that's all -- not to be sure. And I think it is important that we do not forget the importance of this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained. Here lies a responsibility to society.

Richard Feynman
"The Value of Science"
address, National Academy of Sciences (Autumn, 1955)
published in
What Do You Care What Other People Think? (1988)
quoted, in part, by Timothy Ferris in
"Astronomical Notebook: Minds and Matter"
The New Yorker (5/15/1995)

1362) If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

Thomas Huxley
"On Elementary Instruction in Physiology" (1877) [WQ]
posted by George Osner [ISQ] (10/7/1995)

1341) It's Death Week here in Memphis, the week leading up to the mass veneration of Elvis Presley's grave [...] [i]t's the central ritual in Elvis Culture, a phenomenon that has lately transcended the familiar contours of a dead celebrity cult and has begun to assume the dimensions of a redemptive faith. [...] I've been hearing about the Death Night ceremony, about the way it's grown into a must-see sui generis American folk ritual, a fusion of our longing for spirituality and our lust for celebrity. [...] It has become a truism that the three most identifiable names in the world are Jesus, Coca-Cola and Elvis. What's remarkable is that, to some, Elvis has come to seem less like the soft drink - just another commodity - and more like a savior.

Ron Rosenbaum
"Among the Believers"
New York Times Magazine (9/24/1995)

1342) Peter Whitmer delivered a paper on Elvis as a "Twinless Twin," his take on the thesis that the primal defining event of Elvis's life occurred in the moments before his birth, when his twin, Jesse Garon Presley, emerged stillborn, leaving Elvis a lifelong legacy of loss, pain and survivor guilt. Some say Elvis would "talk to" Jesse for the rest of his life. And that every song he sang was really a duet - with the ghost of his dead twin. (Other "twinless twins," according to Whitmer: Liberace, Diego Rivera, Thorton Wilder, Philip K. Dick and - yes - Ed Sullivan.)

Ron Rosenbaum
"Among the Believers"
New York Times Magazine (9/24/1995)

1343) "This [Sun Studios in Memphis, where Sam Phillips discovered Elvis Presley] is a place of life," one woman was saying, "while Graceland - I was just over there and it's so sad."

"Sad because of what became of him?" I asked her.

"No," she said, "sad because of what became of us."

But that's precisely why America has come to love and embrace the Late, Fat, Pain-Racked, Self-Destructive Elvis. It's a way of coming to terms with our own sense of loss, with what's become of us as a nation - the transition America has made from the young, vital, innocent pioneer nation we once were (the young vital Elvis we put on our stamps) to the bloated colossus we feel we've become: the Fat Elvis of nations. For America, finding a way to love the fat, sweaty figure Elvis turned into, the heartbroke, pain-and-pill-filled impersonator of greatness, may be our way of finding, in our own decline, some forgiveness, some humor, even some healing.

Ron Rosenbaum
"Among the Believers"
New York Times Magazine (9/24/1995)

1336) There is no terror in a bang, only in the anticipation of it.

Alfred Hitchcock
quoted by Leslie Halliwell in
Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1984) [CQ]
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/25/1995)

1337) It is after you have lost your teeth that you can afford to buy steaks.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir (attributed)
posted by Chris West [ISQ] (9/25/1995)

1338) Genius is a will-o'-the-wisp if it lacks a solid foundation of perseverence and fanatical tenacity. This is the most important thing in all of human life ...

Adolf Hitler
quoted by Richard Overy in
How the Allies Won (1995)
citing P.E. Schramm
Hitler: The Man and the Military Leader (1972)

You want to know the real disgrace, what these people are about to do or are in the process of doing? Senator Bill Frist and Congressmen Dennis Hastert and their Republican stooges apparently don't see anything wrong with this. I really do wonder sometimes what we're becoming in this country.