“The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trouser-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever.”

— Sinclair Lewis , book Babbitt

Babbitt (1922), Ch. 8

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 10, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trouser-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the boomi…" by Sinclair Lewis?

Sinclair Lewis 136

American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright 1885–1951

Related quotes

“I hate pockets in trousers … By the way, I do not wear a hose. My hose is my own. No coke bottle, nothing stuffed down there.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

As quoted in NME (2 November 1974) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_11-02-1974_-_NME.

“That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox…”

Stanisław Lem book Solaris

Source: Solaris (1961), Ch. 14: "The Old Mimoid", p. 204 [elipsis in original]

“We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Limits Of Inference
Context: p>We may believe what goes beyond our experience, only when it is inferred from that experience by the assumption that what we do not know is like what we know. We may believe the statement of another person, when there is reasonable ground for supposing that he knows the matter of which he speaks, and that he is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.It is wrong in all cases to believe on insufficient evidence; and where it is presumption to doubt and to investigate, there it is worse than presumption to believe.</p

“A copy of the statement I am making tonight concerning developments in Cuba and the reaction of my Government thereto has been handed to your Ambassador in Washington. In view of the gravity of the developments to which I refer, I want you to know immediately and accurately the position of my Government in this matter.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1962, First letter to Nikita Khrushchev

“Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.”

Ludwig von Mises book Socialism

Socialism (1922), Epilogue (1947)

“Every man who has accepted the statement from somebody else, without himself testing and verifying it, is out of court; his word is worth nothing at all. And when we get back at last to the true birth and beginning of the statement, two serious questions must be disposed of in regard to him who first made it: was he mistaken in thinking that he knew about this matter, or was he lying?”

William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879) English mathematician and philosopher

The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority
Context: We have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it. However many nations and generations of men are brought into the witness-box they cannot testify to anything which they do not know. Every man who has accepted the statement from somebody else, without himself testing and verifying it, is out of court; his word is worth nothing at all. And when we get back at last to the true birth and beginning of the statement, two serious questions must be disposed of in regard to him who first made it: was he mistaken in thinking that he knew about this matter, or was he lying?