“I know that when people pull apart, they usually employ misunderstanding as a weapon, deliberately getting hold of the stick's wrong end, impaling themselves on its point in order to prove the perfidy of the other.”
Source: Fury
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Salman Rushdie 122
British Indian novelist and essayist 1947Related quotes

Sec. 191
The Gay Science (1882)
Upon Lebia Arguing, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

"A Talk to Western Buddhists" p. 87.
The Dalai Lama: A Policy of Kindness (1990)
Context: To study Buddhism and then use it as a weapon in order to criticize others' theories or ideologies is wrong. The very purpose of religion is to control yourself, not to criticize others. Rather, we must criticize ourselves. How much am I doing about my anger? About my attachment, about my hatred, about my pride, my jealousy? These are the things which we must check in daily life with the knowledge of the Buddhist teachings.

Oui interview (1979)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 135.

W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics (1893, 1925)

Interview with Alfred Werner, Liberal Judaism 16 (April-May 1949), Einstein Archive 30-1104, as sourced in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 173
Differing versions of such a statement are attributed to conversations as early as 1948 (e.g. The Rotarian, 72 (6), June 1948, p. 9 http://books.google.com/books?id=0UMEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9: "I don't know. But I can tell you what they'll use in the fourth. They'll use rocks!"). Another variant ("I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones") is attributed to an unidentified letter to Harry S. Truman in "The culture of Einstein" by Alex Johnson http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7406337/, MSNBC, (18 April 2005). However, prior to 1948 very similar quotes were attributed in various articles to an unnamed army lieutenant, as discussed at Quote Investigator : "The Futuristic Weapons of WW3 Are Unknown, But WW4 Will Be Fought With Stones and Spears" http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/16/future-weapons/#more-679. The earliest found was from “Quote and Unquote: Raising ‘Alarmist’ Cry Brings a Winchell Reply” by Walter Winchell, in the Wisconsin State Journal (23 September 1946), p. 6, Col. 3. In this article Winchell wrote: <blockquote> Joe Laitin reports that reporters at Bikini were questioning an army lieutenant about what weapons would be used in the next war. “I dunno,” he said, “but in the war after the next war, sure as Hell, they’ll be using spears!” </blockquote>
: It seems plausible, therefore, that Einstein may have been quoting or paraphrasing an expression which he had heard or read elsewhere.
1940s
Variant: I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

“People often behave badly when they are trying to prove a point.”
Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 10 (p. 177)
Writing on medieval geography in: Mittman, Asa Maps and Monsters in Medieval England https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Maps_and_Monsters_in_Medieval_England/2ancAAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Natalia+Lozovsky&pg=PA27&printsec=frontcover (Taylor & Francis, 2013) p.27