“No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.”
Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)
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Henry Adams311
journalist, historian, academic, novelist 1838–1918Related quotes
Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist
Writing for a Hundred Years Hence
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part VII - On the Making of Music, Pictures, and Books
Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna
[In the Company of the Holy Mother, 305]
“In either case the orator should bear clearly in mind throughout his whole speech what the fiction is to which he has committed himself, since we are apt to forget our falsehoods, and there is no doubt about the truth of the proverb that a liar should have a good memory.”
Vtrubique autem orator meminisse debebit actione tota quid finxerit, quoniam solent excidere quae falsa sunt: verumque est illud quod vulgo dicitur, mendacem memorem esse oportere.
Quintilian (35–96) ancient Roman rhetor
Book IV, Chapter II, 91; translation by H. E. Butler
Compare: "Liars ought to have good memories", Algernon Sidney, Discourses on Government, chapter ii, section xv.
Alternate translation for "solent excidere quae falsa sunt": False things tend to be forgotten
De Institutione Oratoria (c. 95 AD)
Richard Feynman book The Meaning of It All
lecture III: "This Unscientific Age"
The Meaning of It All (1999)
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
Source: The Story of My Life (1932), p. 267
Fathi Yakan (1933–2009) Lebanese Islamic cleric-politician
Top Lebanese Sunni Cleric Fathi Yakan: Bin Laden a Man After My Own Heart; I Am Not Sad Because of 9/11 and I Have Never Condemned this Attack, MEMRI, March 2007 http://www.memritv.org/clip_transcript/en/1408.htm,