Quotes about directory

A collection of quotes on the topic of directory, most, people, telephone.

Quotes about directory

Antonin Scalia photo
Napoleon I of France photo

“What I have done up to this is nothing. I am only at the beginning of the course I must run. Do you imagine that I triumph in Italy in order to aggrandise the pack of lawyers who form the Directory, and men like Carnot and Barras? What an idea!”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

As quoted in Memoirs of Count Miot de Melito (1788 - 1815) as translated by Frances Cashel Hoey and John Lillie (1881), Vol. II, p. 94

Werner Herzog photo
Gore Vidal photo
Patrick Modiano photo

“What happened, get lost in the directory tree again?”

Rick Cook (1944) American writer

The Wizardry Consulted (1995)

James Boswell photo

“In every place, where there is any thing worthy of observation, there should be a short printed directory for strangers.”

James Boswell (1740–1795) Scottish lawyer, diarist and author

19 August 1773
The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1785)

William F. Buckley Jr. photo

“I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

Listen the to actual quoted words: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nf_bu-kBr4
1963 statement, as quoted in The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 82
Meet the Press (1965), as quoted in The Quote Verifier : Who Said What, Where, and When (2006) by Ralph Keyes, p. 82
The numbers cited in paraphrases of this quote often vary from 100 to 2000.
Unsourced variant: I would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the 2000 members of the faculty of Harvard University.
Variant: I would rather be governed by the first two thousand people in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand people on the faculty of Harvard University.

Alan Watts photo
James Branch Cabell photo