Source: Sprawl trilogy, Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Chapter 39, "Too Much"
“Never had so much been surrendered by so many to so few.”
Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister
4 Jan 1941 https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-128/churchill-and-the-western-desert-campaign-1940-43/, after Operation Compass and the Italian surrender at Bardia in the Western Desert. <br class="br">Quoted in B. H. Liddell Hart's A History of the Second World War (Cassell, 1970), p. 117
“I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet.”
Stanisław Lem (1921–2006) Polish science fiction author
Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman
Chief Secretary for Ireland
Source: Letter to Mary Gladstone Drew (17 May 1891), in Some Hawarden Letters, 1878–1913, Written to Mrs. Drew (Miss Mary Gladstone) Before and After Her Marriage, chosen and arranged by Lisle March-Phillipps and Bertram Christian (London: Nisbet & Co., 1917), p. 248.
Ibram X. Kendi (1982) American author and historian
But racist is describing what you’re saying in the moment.<br><br>On why racist is a crucial descriptive term in “How to Be an Antiracist Author Ibram X. Kendi on What We Get Wrong About Racism” https://time.com/5647303/how-to-be-antiracist-author-interview/ in Time Magazine (2019 Aug 8)
“Pip, dear old chap, life is made of ever so many partings welded together…”
Charles Dickens book Great Expectations
Source: Great Expectations (1860-1861), Ch. 27
“There are so many things that we wish we had done yesterday, so few that we feel like doing today.”
Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified
Henry David Thoreau book A Plea for Captain John Brown
A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
Context: I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came? — till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man.
“Never have so few owed so much to so many.”
Newton N. Minow (1926) United States attorney and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
Speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, May 9, 1961 (the Wasteland Speech)
