Address at the National Plowing Match (18 September 1948); as quoted in Miracle of '48: Harry Truman's Major Campaign Speeches and Selected Whistle-stops (2003); edited by Steve Neal. Truman's mention of an "old political trick" is often quoted alone as if it were a strategy he was advising rather than one he was criticizing.
Context: On the one hand, the Republicans are telling industrial workers that the high cost of food in the cities is due to this government's farm policy. On the other hand, the Republicans are telling the farmers that the high cost of manufactured goods on the farm is due to this government's labor policy.
That's plain hokum. It's an old political trick: "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em." But this time it won't work.
“You can't teach an old dogma new tricks.”
Source: Attributed to Parker after her death, by Robert E. Drennan The Algonquin Wits (1968), p. 124. However the same quip appears anonymously fifteen years earlier, in the trade journal Sales Management (Chicago: Dartnell Corp., 1918-75), vol. 70 (Survey of Buying Power, 1953), p. 80: "Marxism never changes. You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks."
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Dorothy Parker 172
American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist 1893–1967Related quotes
“Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.”
An Old Man's Thoughts on Many Things, Of Education I
Context: I have said nothing about religious teaching as one of the means of forming a good character.... I, who am not a teacher of religion, do not presume to say how it should be taught, so taught as to be practical. If you merely teach dogmas dogmatically, you are not teaching in the sense in which I understand teaching... and learning... does not consist merely in knowing: it is not learning unless there is some corresponding doing.
Source: The Nature of Personal Reality (1974), p. 359 Session 654
Source: Survivals and New Arrivals (1929), Ch. IV The Main Opposition (iii) The "Modern" Mind
“Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.”
Source: Annie Hall: Screenplay
“The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as long swallows.”
“The trick is growing up without growing old.”