“Intellectual brilliance is no guarantee against being dead wrong.”

— David Fasold

Source: [Pickover, Clifford, The Mathematics of Oz, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 47, 2002, 0521016789] From [Fasold, David, The Ark of Noah, Wynwood, 1988, New York, 0922066108]

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David Fasold 1

American sailor 1939–1998

A. N. Wilson (1950) English writer

A. N. Wilson, as quoted in The Guardian (30 September 1989); also in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) by Robert Andrews, p. 6.

“To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Homeric Synchronism : An Enquiry Into the Time and Place of Homer (1876), Introduction
1870s
Context: A rational reaction against the irrational excesses and vagaries of scepticism may, I admit, readily degenerate into the rival folly of credulity. To be engaged in opposing wrong affords, under the conditions of our mental constitution, but a slender guarantee for being right.

“It's wrong to flog a man. It's against his being a man.”

Peter Ustinov (1921–2004) English actor, writer, and dramatist

Billy Budd
Billy Budd (1962)

“This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)
Context: This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the 'storm came and the wind blew'.

“There is no such thing as free lunch, and even if there were, there’d be no guarantee against indigestion.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences (1988), Chapter 5, “Statistics, Trade-Offs, and Society” (p. 147)

“It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong. Impartiality does not mean neutrality. Impartial justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Source: 1910s, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (1916), p. 26

“People don't ever seem to realise that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune.”

William McFee (1881–1966) American writer

Book II: The City, Ch. VI
Also quoted as: Doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune. Paraphrased variant: "People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right's no guarantee against misfortune."
Casuals of the Sea (1916)