Quoted in Writers at Work 1st Series by Malcolm Cowley (1958)
“Calvin Coolidge was the greatest man who ever came out of Plymouth Corner, Vermont.”
Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union
As quoted in Foundations of Democracy: A Series of Debates (1939) by Thomas Vernor Smith and Robert Alphonso Taft, p. 10
“Coolidge: Sins.
Mrs. Coolidge: Well, what did he say about it?
Coolidge: He was against it.”
Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)
when asked by his wife what a preacher's sermon had been about
John H. McKee, Coolidge: Wit and Wisdom, 1933
Author Nigel Rees claims this is apocryphal:
The taciturn President became famous for monosyllabic replies. A story from the twenties has Mrs. Coolidge asking him the subject of a sermon he had heard. "Sin," he answered. When prompted to elaborate on the clergyman's theme, Coolidge is said to have replied: "He was against it." Coolidge remarked that this story would have been funnier if it had been true.
Nigel Rees, Sayings of the Century, page 67.
Misattributed
Irene Dunne (1898–1990) American actress
about her husband, Dr. Francis Griffin Revealing The Life Of Irene Dunne, by Adele Whitely Fletcher; The Modern Screen (September 1933) http://www.irenedunnesite.com/press/modern-screen-september-1933/.
“I don't think the thing is to be well known, but being worth knowing.”
Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer
Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King
Jane Taylor (1783–1824) British poet
"Essays in Rhyme" from On Morals and Manners, Prejudice, Essay i. Stanza 45, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
“I pride myself on being incorrigible. I have a very hard time being told what to do.”
Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player
As quoted in Guitar World (May 2000).
Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer
Source: Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness
John Gray (1948) British philosopher
In The Puppet Theatre: Puppetry, Conspiracy and Ouija Boards (p. 136)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)
“I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all.”
Isaac Newton book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Definitions - Scholium
Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
Context: I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.
