“This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of others merely by getting a law passed.”

— Groucho Marx

Last update Feb. 11, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "This isn't a particularly novel observation, but the world is full of people who think they can manipulate the lives of…" by Groucho Marx?

Groucho Marx 117

American comedian 1890–1977

Related quotes

“We are all potentially characters in a novel--with the difference that characters in a novel really get to live their lives to the full.”

Georges Simenon (1903–1989) Belgian writer

“But this isn't a perfect world. The problem is people who think it is. -Connor”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

“This observation is merely the extension of a law”

Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874) Belgian astronomer, mathematician, statistician and sociologist

Introductory
A Treatise on Man and the Development of His Faculties (1842)
Context: This observation is merely the extension of a law well known to all who have studied the condition of society in a philosophic manner: it is, that so long as the same causes exist, we must expect a repetition of the same effects. What has induced some to believe that moral phenomena did not obey this law, has been the too great influence ascribed all times to man himself over his actions.

“The division between those who try to learn about the world by manipulating it and those who can only observe it had led, in natural science, to a struggle for legitimacy. The experimentalists look down on the observers as merely telling uncheckable just-so stories, while the observers scorn the experimentalists for their cheap victories over excessively simple phenomena. In biology the two camps are now generally segregated in separate academic departments where they can go about their business unhassled by their unbelievers. But the battle is unequal because the observers' consciousness of what it is to do "real" science has been formed in a world dominated by the manipulators of nature. The observers then pretend to an exactness that they cannot achieve and they attempt to objectify a part of nature that is completely accessible only with the air of subjective tools.”

Richard C. Lewontin (1929) American evolutionary biologist

a reply to critical comments on his article "Sex, Lies and Social Science" in New York Review of Books (4/20/95)].
Sex, Lies, and Social Science (1995)