Dr. Wallis's Account of some Passages of his own Life (1696)
“I drink when I have occasion, and sometimes when I have no occasion.”
Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book III, Ch. 33.
Source: Utopia of Usurers (1917), p. 23
“Incompetence plus incompetence equals incompetence”
Source: The Peter Principle (1969), p. 107 (The Mathematics of Incompetence)
Quote of Huelsenbeck, in 'Dada Lives', Transition no. 25 (Autumn 1936), as cited in The Dada Painters and Poets: An Anthology, ed. Robert Motherwell (1951)
“It may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosen to employ inferior organisms as a generative medium”
Source: Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), p. 235
Context: It may be asked, if He, as appears, has chosen to employ inferior organisms as a generative medium for the production of higher ones, even including ourselves, what right have we, his humble creatures, to find fault? There is, also, in this prejudice, an element of unkindliness towards the lower animals, which is utterly out of place. These creatures are all of them part products of the Almighty Conception, as well as ourselves.... Let us regard them in a proper spirit, as parts of the grand plan, instead of contemplating them in the light of frivolous prejudices, and we shall be altogether at a loss to see how there should be any degradation in the idea of our race having been genealogically connected with them.
“I don't know what I'm doing, but my incompetence has never stopped my enthusiasm.”
Variant: I have no idea what I am doing but incompetence has never prevented me from plunging in with enthusiasm.
