“It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners.”

— F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead

Statement of 1925, as quoted in Britain between the Wars (1955) by C. L. Mowat, p. 300.

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F. E. Smith, 1st Earl of Birkenhead 27

British politician 1872–1930

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The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth-century Philosophers (1932)

“Only the wisest and stupidest of men never change.”

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“my good qualities are under your protection, and you are to exaggerate them as much as possible; and, in return, it belongs to me to find occasion for teasing and quarreling with you as often as may be…”

Jane Austen book Pride and Prejudice

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“From across the Earth, Americans are drawn to this place as though it were a part of our very soul. We come not only because of what they did here, we come because of who they were. They were young men with their entire lives before them. They were husbands who said goodbye to their young brides and took their duty as their fate. They were fathers who would never meet their infant sons and daughters because they had a job to do. And with God as their witness, they were going to get it done. They came wave after wave, without question, without hesitation, and without complaint.”

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“One of the first interesting experiences I had in this project at Princeton was meeting great men. I had never met very many great men before. But there was an evaluation committee that had to try to help us along, and help us ultimately decide which way we were going to separate the uranium. This committee had men like Compton and Tolman and Smyth and Urey and Rabi and Oppenheimer on it. I would sit in because I understood the theory of how our process of separating isotopes worked, and so they'd ask me questions and talk about it. In these discussions one man would make a point. Then Compton, for example, would explain a different point of view. He would say it should be this way, and he was perfectly right. Another guy would say, well, maybe, but there's this other possibility we have to consider against it.

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Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)
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“It would be possible to say without exaggeration that the miners' leaders were the stupidest men in England if we had not frequent occasion to meet the owners.”

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