“I don't speechify. I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. I just want to ask a tough question.”

Interview by Adam Holdorf for Real Change News, (18 March 2004).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Helen Thomas20

American author and journalist 1920–2013

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: A Wrinkle in Time: With Related Readings

“The straight line is regarded as the shortest distance between two people, as if they were points.”

Theodor W. Adorno book Minima Moralia

Nun gilt für die kürzeste Verbindung zwischen zwei Personen die Gerade, so als ob sie Punkte wären.
E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 20
Minima Moralia (1951)

“In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Source: The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“Morality has got nothing to do with the politicians. Simply, because the straight line is considered by them as the longest distance between the two points.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“Common to the two geometries is only the general property of one-to-one correspondence, and the rule that this correspondence determines straight lines as shortest lines as well as their relations of intersection.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

“Distance in a straight line has no mystery. The mystery is in the sphere.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

“Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

El ir derecho acorta las distancias, y también la vida.
Voces (1943)

“In the preceding section attention was called to the fact that every point p of the straight line produces a separation of the same into two portions such that every point of one portion lies to the left of every point of the other. I find the essence of continuity in the converse, i. e., in the following principle:
"If all points of the straight line fall into two classes such that every point of the first class lies to the left of every point of the second class, then there exists one and only one point which produces this division of all points into two classes, this severing of the straight line into two portions."
…every one will at once grant the truth of this statement; the majority of my readers will be very much disappointed in learning that by this commonplace remark the secret of continuity is to be revealed.”

Richard Dedekind (1831–1916) German mathematician

Stetigkeit und irrationale Zahlen (1872)

“Somedays the line I walk turns out to be straight -
Other days the line tends to deviate.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

In or Out
Song lyrics

“A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”

Clive Staples Lewis book Mere Christianity

Book II, Chapter 1, "The Rival Conceptions of God"
Mere Christianity (1952)
Context: My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

“I don't speechify. I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. I just want to ask a tough question.”

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Helen Thomas20

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