“A pig can learn more tricks than a dog, but has too much sense to want to do it.”

—  Robertson Davies

The Table Talk of Samuel Marchbanks (1949)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "A pig can learn more tricks than a dog, but has too much sense to want to do it." by Robertson Davies?
Robertson Davies photo
Robertson Davies 282
Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and nov… 1913–1995

Related quotes

Frederick Winslow Taylor photo

“I dare say that most of you gentlemen know that a good many pig-iron handlers can never learn to shovel right; the ordinary pig-iron handler is not the type of man well suited to shoveling. He is to stupid; there is too much mental strain, too much knack required of a shoveled for the pig-iron handler to take kindly to shoveling.”

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856–1915) American mechanical engineer and tennis player

Source: Testimony of Frederick W. Taylor... 1912, p. 111.

“I say, thirteen is too many dogs for good mental health. Five is pretty much the limit. More than five dogs and you forfeit your right to call yourself entirely sane.
Even if the dogs are small.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone photo

“There is a sense in which all law is nothing more nor less than a gigantic confidence trick.”

Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone (1907–2001) British judge, politician, life peer and Cabinet minister

Speech to Devon Magistrates, The Times 12 April 1972.

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Horses can manufacture more horses and that is one trick that tractors have never learned.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 18, “Pioneer Party” (p. 187)

Dwight D. Eisenhower photo

“Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Source: At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends

Bruce Lee photo

“In Jeet Kune Do, it’s not how much you have learned, but how much you have absorbed from what you have learned. It is not how much fixed knowledge you can accumulate, but what you can apply livingly that counts. ‘Being’ is more valued than "doing."”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: The Warrior Within : The Philosophies of Bruce Lee (1996), p. 117

Robert Anton Wilson photo

“Everyone has a belief system, B. S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B. S. too seriously, especially your own.”

Robert Anton Wilson book Reality Is What You Can Get Away With

Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (1993, 1996)

Gerd Binnig photo

“Doing physics is much more enjoyable than just learning it. Maybe 'doing it' is the right way of learning, at least as far as I am concerned.”

Gerd Binnig (1947) German physicist

in his Nobel biography, edited by [Tore Frängsmyr, Gösta Ekspong, Nobelstiftelsen, Physics 1981-1990, World Scientific, 1993, 9810207298, 383]

Clifford D. Simak photo

“The past, he said. The past is too much with me. And the past has made me useless. I have too much to remember—so much to remember that it becomes more important than the things there are to do. I’m living in the past and that is no way to live.”

Clifford D. Simak book City

Source: City (1952), Chapter 7, “Aesop” (p. 201)

Ingrid Newkirk photo

“Animal liberationists do not separate out the human animal, so there is no rational basis for saying that a human being has special rights. A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They are all mammals”

Ingrid Newkirk (1949) British-American activist

Vogue 1989 September 1
Attributed variants:
"When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy"
"A rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. They’re all animals." — Washingtonian magazine, 1986 August 1

Related topics