“Commencement speakers have a good deal in common with grandfather clocks: Standing usually some six feet tall, typically ponderous in construction, more traditional than functional, their distinction is largely their noisy communication of essentially commonplace information.”
Commencement address at University of Iowa. <br class="br">Commencement address, University of Iowa http://www.bartleby.com/63/48/2748.html, Time (June 19, 1965)
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W. Willard Wirtz1
American Secretary of Labor 1912–2010Related quotes
Jon Elster (1940) Norwegian academic
Reason and Rationality (2009)
G. K. Chesterton book The Defendant
"Introduction"
The Defendant (1901)
Context: In our time the blasphemies are threadbare. Pessimism is now patently, as it always was essentially, more commonplace than piety. Profanity is now more than an affectation — it is a convention. The curse against God is Exercise I in the primer of minor poetry.
Randall Jarrell book Five Young American Poets
"A Note on Poetry," preface to The Rage for the Lost Penny: Five Young American Poets (New Directions, 1940) [p. 49]
Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964 (1980)
Dashiell Hammett book The Thin Man
I pushed the dog away to reach for my drink.
Nick Charles
The Thin Man (1929)
“You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Quoted in Herbert V. Prochnow (1955), Speaker's Book of Epigrams and Witticisms
Misattributed
“Success is more a function of consistent common sense than it is of genius.”
An Wang (1920–1990) American businessman
Lessons : An Autobiography (1986)
Chester Barnard book The Functions of the Executive
Source: The Functions of the Executive (1938), p. 87
Paul Glover (1947) Community organizer in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; American politician
http://www.paulglover.org/8709.html (“What’s Next for Ithaca?”), The Grapevine, cover story, 1987-09-15 <br class="br">Context: “Growth is a good thing, up to about seven feet tall, then it starts to get inconvenient. People eight feet tall bang their heads, their backs ache, their circulation slows, they spend more for food and clothes, and when they fall it really hurts. Who can they make love to? ---The same is true of cities. After a certain size they get more frustrating than exciting: People collide and anger turns to crime. Streets become dangerous, housing costs more, tax rates rise, schools teach less, structures dwarf people, air smells stale, water fouls and traffic slows no matter how wide the roads.”