“The hearsay of hearsay is not admissible as scholarship.”
Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust
Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 1, “Trinity” (p. 11)
“Biographies usually begin with the smack on the bottom and the first lusty cry of the subject. I deplore this literary custom, because it is impossible to remember anything about one's birth firsthand. It is bound to be hearsay, and embellished, gilded hearsay at that.”
Source: What Time's the Next Swan? (1962), Ch. 1, p. 1
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Walter Slezak10
actor 1902–1983Related quotes
“My universe is my eyes and my ears. Anything else is hearsay.”
Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
“We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.”
Eric Hoffer (1898–1983) American philosopher
Sections 128 - 129
The Passionate State Of Mind, and Other Aphorisms (1955)
Context: Our credulity is greatest concerning the things we know least about. And since we know least about ourselves, we are ready to believe all that is said about us. Hence the mysterious power of both flattery and calumny.... It is thus with most of us: we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.
“Truth can thus only percolate in the form of hearsay.”
Robert Conquest book The Great Terror
The Great Terror, pg 754; Quoted in Grover Furr on Robert Conquest http://www.stalinsociety.org/2015/08/05/grover-furr-on-robert-conquest/ at stalinsociety.org',' 2015/08/05
“One eyewitness weighs more than ten hearsays. Seeing is believing, all the world over.”
Pluris est oculatus testis unus, quam auriti decem. Qui audiunt, audita dicunt: qui vident, plane sciunt.
Truculentus, Act II, sc. 6, line 8.
Truculentus
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservativism
Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 86
“Your holy hearsay is not evidence.
Give me the good news in the present tense.”
Sydney Carter (1915–2004) British musician and poet
"Present Tense"
Context: Your holy hearsay is not evidence.
Give me the good news in the present tense.
What happened nineteen hundred years ago
May not have happened.
How am I to know?
So shut your Bibles up and show me how
The Christ you talk about
Is living now.
Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher
1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters