“The Bulk of mankind is as well equipped for flying as thinking.”
Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)
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Jonathan Swift 141
Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet 1667–1745Related quotes

“It is the natural fault of young people to think too well of mankind [...].”
Book I, ch. II, The Passage from Madeira to the Cape Verd Islands, and from thence to the Cape of Good Hope.
A Voyage Round the World (1777)

Introduction to Astronomicon of Manilius, Lib I. (Cambridge University Press, [1903] 1937) p. xliii.

“Mankind's troubles flicker about, and you'll nowhere see misery fly on the same wings.”
Source: The Suppliants, lines 328–329 (tr. Christopher Collard)
Page 176
The Life of Lewis Carroll (1962)

On John Garang's death in a helicopter crash, as quoted in Times Online https://web.archive.org/web/20050805121254/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1722777,00.html (5 August 2005), United Kingdom
2000s

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

“I’m thinking on the fly, here.”
Although now that I’m in middle management I think I’m supposed to call it “refactoring the strategic value proposition in real time with agile implementation,” or, if I’m being honest, “making it up as I go along.”
Source: The Laundry Files, The Apocalypse Codex (2012), Chapter 9, “Speaking in Tongues” (p. 180)

After all, it’s more useful to know how to drive a car than it is to know what makes it go. Of course it’s important to know certain things about a machine, but I don’t need to be able to build my own synthesizer. It strikes me that the people who do build them don’t know how to play them, so l’d rather find out more about playing".
1984