A Question And A Joke
You can listen to hours of talk, and then hear everything you need to hear in one sentence. This happened to PG twice recently. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Dr. Glenn Loury is a frequent flyer at Bloggingheads.tv. He hosted a recent discussion with the eyeball grabbing headline Are school suspension policies racist? The guest, Robert Cherry, was going-on-and-on about black household percentages, when Dr. Loury asked “What’s the source of those data?” The guest never did answer the question.
In many internet incidents, statistics are accepted without question. Weasel words like average and prove are not challenged. Simple questions, like “who paid for the study” are not asked. Is this an authority issue? Do rhetoric spouting bullies use statistics as weapons, never to be challenged?
The war on drugs is another playground for authoritarianism. A recent episode of radiolab, The Fix, explores developments in chemical solutions to the remorseless desire to get fucked up. Some say we are headed to a “prozac moment,” to a sea change in the way we view addiction. Others hold onto the AA method, and say that it is the only thing that works for some. Since everyone approaches substances in their own unique way, there probably will never be a one-size-fits-all answer.
The radiolab show links to a panel discussion with “top addiction researchers.” Despite the charming European accents, the show is suicidally boring. At the 13:24 mark, Eric Nestler says “Dr. Volkoff gives me a lot of grant money I cannot disagree with her.” It was intended as a joke.
Seven Score And A Dozen Years Ago
A vicious battle had been fought near Gettysburg, PA. It is widely considered the turning point of “Mr. Lincoln”s War,” the moment when the Union took the upper hand. It came at a horrible price, and a cemetery was built to hold this price.
The ceremony to dedicate the cemetery was held November 19, 1863. The headline speaker was Senator Edward Everett. The President was an afterthought. After it was over, Mr. Everett reportedly told the President that he said more in two minutes than he did in two hours.
The speech by Mr. Lincoln is an American classic. Schoolchildren are forced to memorize it. There are a few legends, many of which are not true. According to The Lincoln Museum , the speech was written on White House stationary, not the back of an envelope. The train ride would have been too bumpy to write. There is also confusion about what happened to the original text that the President read from.
HT to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Measured in pixels, the picture of George Custer is 720×666. This is a repost.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
The “Desiderata” Story
There was a poem , of unknown origin, found in a Baltimore church in 1692. It was revived by a Lawyer, who lived in Terre Haute, IN. He liked to read it his friends, and his lips were moving. The attorney , Max Ehrmann, copyrighted this poem in 1927. Another persistent rumor has it that the manuscript was in an ambulance Mr. Ehrmann was following. How the accident victim came to possess this document is a mystery.
Mr. Ehrmann ( the poet laureate of Terre Haute ) wrote in his diary “I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift — a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods”. The poem is “Desiderata”, and is a favorite of gift shops the world over.
In 1956, Rev. Frederick Kates became the rector of Old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore, MD. He had found a copy of “Desiderata”, without the copyright notice. He printed a handout for his congregation on church stationary. At the top of the page was the notation “Old St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.C. 1692”. As the sixties devolved, the poem became famous.
“Desiderata” was the text of a recording made by Les Crane, who found the poem on a poster. He thought the text was in the public domain, when in fact it is copyrighted. Mr. Crane was taken to court, and forced to pay the owners of the copyright . The matter has been in court on other occasions. It seems that Mr. Ehrmann used “Desiderata” in a Christmas greeting, without citing the copyright. Later,during World War II, Ehrmann allowed a friend – Army psychiatrist Dr. Merrill Moore – to hand out more than 1,000 copies of the poem to his soldier-patients, without the copyright.
PG admits to confusion on this issue. Don’t copyrights expire, get renewed, and then expire again? If a work was written in 1927, doesn’t it go into the public domain 83 years later. The wikipedia article about copyrights is long and confusing. Remember, we are dealing with a legal concept as it relates to a poem written by a lawyer.
A site called fleurdelis says the matter depends on your point of view and place of residence. ( Shcredo says flatly that “Desiderata” is public domain. The link is no longer available. The url advises “Beware your Beliefs – They could bring Great Happiness”) ( Robinsweb tells of being forced to remove “Desiderata” from her site because of a complaint by the copyright owner.) If you want to be inspired, click on the videos embedded in this post.
In 1972, the National Lampoon produced a new translation, Deteriorata. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These are Union Soldiers, from the War Between the States.
Frank Zappa Says
Recently, the world of flaky internet quotes has discovered Frank Zappa. The “sexually incontinent rock innovator” died December 4, 1993. (His wife Gail passed away October 7, 2025.) Recently, some alleged quotes have hit the ether. Some people need to get out more.
This item was recently featured in chamblee54. @SlavojTweezek “”Communism doesn’t work,” Frank Zappa said, “because people like to own stuff.” Idiot. What do people’s likes have to do with communism?” This quote is plausible. Frank Zappa was a capitalist. He liked owning stuff, especially his own music. It should be easy to find a source. However, the best google can come up with is a compilation, “Quotes of Zappa,” in W. C. Privy’s Original Bathroom Companion.”
This morning, facebook had a meme. It had a picture of FZ, with the quote “Politics is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.” In the time that it takes to say Camarillo Brillo, Mr. Google turned up a reddit commentary.
“While the quote is frequently listed as, ““Government is the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex,” I could find no primary source. It appears to contradict the actual quote from a 1987 interview with Keyboard magazine where he is decidedly pro-government but anti-bullshit politics.” (FZ did say “art in the service of politics usually makes for boring art.” Why do people make up quotes for memes, when the real thing is better?)
Speculating what a dead man would say is a tricky business. FZ was known for strong opinions, and a finely tuned BS detector. (That is bovine excrement, not Bernie Sanders.) FZ died while the internet was just getting started, and years before some of today’s permutations and perversions. It is easy to imagine FZ making rude comments about people misquoting dead guitar heros.
Speaking of politics and cynical guitar cadavers, the current poster boi for trendy privilege is Bernie Sanders. If you “feel the Bern,” you might want to skip over the rest of this post, and look at the pictures. (These pictures are from The Library of Congress.) While BS is arguably less evil than Hitlery, he still leaves a great deal to be desired. BS is making extravagant promises that he will be totally unable to keep. BS is taking the concept of telling people what they want to hear to new depths. Yes, this is part of what FZ meant when saying rude things about politicians.
Today, PG saw a fundraising appeal for BS. Against his better judgment, PG made the comment “Bernie $anders.” The fun started almost immediately.
This campaign is for monthly recurring contributions. And Luther, campaigning requires money. The alternative to grassroots support is a country run by wealthy interests. Which would you prefer? ~ I realize that campaigning for political office requires money. My comment was a bit of recreational $nark. B$ can take a joke. … “The alternative to grassroots support is a country run by wealthy interests.” I am not sure about that comparison. Hitlery can make more in one corporate blowjob than BS can in a month of grass roots support. BHO did not get a billion dollars for his reelection from five dollar contributions. While the concept of grassroots support is uplifting, the sordid reality is that we live in a bribe-ocracy. ~ Your cynicism is less than accurate and certainly less than appealing. ~ Luther, just don’t vote and stay out of discussions about voting. OK?
G-d Is In The Details
As the reader(s) of this blog might know, PG listens to “stuff” on the internet while working on pictures. One of the favorites is 99% Invisible, or 99pi. It is a quirky little show. The content is mostly about design, which is supposed to be 99 percent invisible.
The quote is allegedly by Buckminister Fuller, but google does not show a source. PG sent this tweet. “@romanmars When/where did B. Fuller say that design was 99% invisible? I am looking for a source, and google is not helping.” Mr. Mars is the voice of 99pi, and the father of their star advertising voice over. (The notoriously unreliable brainyquote quotes RBF thusly: “Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.” G-d is in the details.)
99pi comes out roughly once a week, and PG faithfully downloads every one. With all the other listening options, some shows pile up. Today, while putting the final touches on a poem, PG listened to episodes 181, 182, 183, and 184.
Milk Carton Kids is about the custom of posting pictures of missing children on milk cartons. The meme much more successful at raising conciousness than it was at finding children.
Bonnie Lohman was an exception. Her stepfather took her shopping, and Bonnie saw her picture on a milk carton. The stepfather bought the milk, cut out the picture, and gave it to Bonnie. Somehow, a neighbor saw it, and the jig was up.
A Sweet Surprise Awaits You is about fortune cookies. This was a minor Japanese custom, which became a fixture at American style Chinese restaurants. The story starts off March 30, 2005. (On April 1, 2005, PG was laid off by Redo Blue after 24 years of service.) Fortune cookies had a number on them that day. The number was the second prize winner in the Powerball lottery.
Dead Letter Office is about the Mail Recovery Center, where long lost packages at the Post Office are auctioned off. The MRC is out by Six Flags, also known to local listeners as Da Hood. One lady bought a box of dishes, with a fine white powder on them. An urn in the box was broken. The ashes of the previous owner were scattered on the plates and saucers.
Rajneeshpuram is about a desert valley in Oregon. It became the home of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and a few hundred of his friends. BSR intended to create a profitable utopia. It did not work out well. The ranch is now owned by a Christian youth group, Young Life.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
#Blackslogansmatter
Ray Lewis used to play pro football. Wednesday, he appeared at a “public safety summit” in Newark NJ. Mr. Lewis said “”Remove the word black and say ‘lives matter,’Stop sending mothers back home empty. You can never replace a mother’s child. If we want black lives matter, let’s make it matter to us. That’s the new call.”
Twitter nation was not amused. #Raylewis was a trending subject for a day or so, until the latest hashtag hatching. Tweet superstar Deray Mckesson led the charge. “Who can call Ray Lewis and let him know that “all lives matter” ain’t it? Because this is the only tweet I’ve got for him tonight.”
Many commenters said that Mr. Lewis had killed someone, and should not be discussing whether lives matter. They were referring to an incident in Buckhead, after the 2000 Super Bowl. If you read beyond the headline, you learn that Mr. Lewis almost certainly did not kill the young men. Those calling Mr. Lewis a murderer probably don’t read past the first sentence of his quote.
Many say the City of Atlanta was too hasty in charging Mr. Lewis with the murder. The prospect of a high profile prosecution was enchanting to the local criminal justice establishment. The case quickly fell apart during the trial. Mr. Lewis accepted a plea bargain for lesser charges. This is a common problem, when you allow justice to become a popularity contest.
There is one tweet that stands out. @Delo_Taylor “No @raylewis I will not remove my blackness to appease white supremacy. So disappointed right now. #BlackLivesMatter” Another has been deleted, but lives on nonetheless. “I cant. No patience for coonery.”
It should not be surprising that people say foolish things on twitter. Nor should it be noteworthy for politicians. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said “People want to talk about violence without talking about inequality because they benefit from inequality,” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
A Prophet And His Honor
PG was editing pictures, listening to the birds and the lawn mowers, and enjoying himself. He began to think about recent events, both global and local. A phrase came to mind, about a prophet who is not without honor, except in his own land. Wasn’t Jesus supposed to have said that? Before you could say algorithm, there were 1.6 million choices.
The quote is in three of the four gospels. In all of these quotes, Jesus is not received as Lord and savior. It is interesting to see the authors of Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree on this. It is noteworthy that the Council of Nicea decided to include it. Here are the three quotes.
Matthew 13 55 Is not this the carpenter’s son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? 56 And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? 57 And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house. 58 And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.
Mark 6 3 Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him. 4 But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 5 And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. 6 And he marvelled because of their unbelief…
Luke 4 22 And all bare him witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth. And they said, Is not this Joseph’s son? 23 And he said unto them, Ye will surely say unto me this proverb, Physician, heal thyself: whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum, do also here in thy country. 24 And he said, Verily I say unto you, No prophet is accepted in his own country.
The historic Jesus, as portrayed in the Bible, is a flawed messenger. He apparently did not have the trust of the people. Jesus did not have a problem with false modesty. John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
PG heard a motivational speaker once. He said to sell yourself first, your company second, and your product third. If you are going to win someone over, the person needs to trust you. You cannot call yourself a prophet, and expect them to believe you because your message is so wonderful. This is a concept that Jesus might have had a problem with. Many believers today have the same problem.
Jesus is worshiped as a G-d these days. Modern Christians are more interested in his death, than in his life. The worship of Jesus has devolved into a scheme for life after death. Those who decline to participate in this religion can expect to be insulted. It is a curious sales pitch. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The agencies were Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information.
Be Kind To Your Enemy
Did Jesus say to “Love your enemy” ? Some believe this, and do it. Some claim to believe this, and practice the opposite. There are others who claim to love their enemies, but you have to understand what they mean by it. It can be very confusing. This is a repost.
PG went to a source for documentation. Oh, the blessed conjunction of copy paste with public domain. When PG entered enemy (singular) in the search engine, 100 verses came up. When the request was made plural (enemies), 237 entries popped up. The last mention of enemies is Revelation 11:12 “And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended up to heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them.” Loving your enemies does not include bringing them to heaven with you. There is also the star of the show.
Matthew 5:44 “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.”
There is scholarly debate about what Jesus did, or did not, say. The words available to modern man have been copied by hand, edited, translated, and interpreted. PG does not know Aramaic from Alabama. Like anyone else, PG can only read and listen, and think for himself.
In a sense it does not matter what Jesus “really” said. The cult of Jesus Worship is going to believe what it wants. More important, it is going to practice what it wants. As far as the difference between what Jesus “really” said, and what his believers say and do…they can explain.
What follows is a humble suggestion. Maybe the translators and scribes got it wrong. Maybe Jesus did not say to love your enemy. Maybe what Jesus said was to show kindness to everyone. This is a practice thing, rather than a belief thing.
It is not as much fun to be nice to someone, as it is to scream about life after death. Kindness does not need to be justified by a quote from a magic book. You just need to do it.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Only The Dead
@EdDarrell “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Who said that? Contrary to what Black Hawk Down says, this quote is not in any of Plato’s writings. The student of Socrates may have said it, and it may sound like something he would have said. However, nobody has been able to find it in his work.
George Santayana was a writer, philosopher, and sayer of smart things. “Only the dead…” appears in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies, number 25 (1922). The signature quote from Mr. Santayana is “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” It is found in The Life of Reason, vol. 1: Reason in Common Sense.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war” is an aphorism that sounds good until you think about it a bit. It was written by a living person. It has never been confirmed by conversation with a dead person. For all we know, the dead see plenty of war.
A google search inspired by the original tweet turned up a dandy post, Quotes Behaving Badly: 9 Quotes That Are Wrong, Dishonest, Mis-attributed or Idiotic. As the reader(s) of this blog know, quote debunkers are much needed on the internet. The first of the Four Principles of Quotation puts it another way. “Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.” It doesn’t matter if the inspiring words are calligraphied in front of a breathtaking mountain backdrop, or if credit is given to a dead white man.
The Four Principles page cited discusses an old warhorse quote, “Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus.” Thomas Jefferson is one of those accused of saying that. Quotes Behaving Badly also mentions this chestnut.
To begin with, no one seems to know who originally said it, and what the exact words were. Worse is the way this quote is used by demagogues. So called leaders use this quote to manipulate others. Often, these people do not know what they are talking about. Their actions make the situation worse, rather than better. But they are doing something.
Quotes Behaving Badly takes on more versions of the misused quote. There is the quote from a character in a novel, which is strawmanned into representing the thoughts of the author. There is also the quote taken out of context.
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst.” This is in Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein. PG has never read ST, and does not know the context of the quote.
Quotes Behaving Badly implies that the quote is from a villain in the story. “The problem is that an author cannot take ownership for the dialogue of the characters he creates. If two characters debate, does the author then believe both sides of a debate? And would the author have to support the views and opinions super villains, serial killers, dictators, and even child molesters.”
There is a humongous archive dedicated to Mohanda Gandhi. If he said it, then there should be a written record. That does not mean that people will use the quote properly.
“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence… I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor.” The next line contradicts the first part. “But I believe that non-violence is infinitely superior to violence…”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Rick Santorum Is Back
This is a double repost from a more innocent time. Former Senator Rick Santorum is running for President, again. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Rick Santorum is a former Senator from Pennsylvania. He wants to be President of the United States. If the voters of Pennsylvania fire you from the Senate, then you run for President. There is a certain logic to that. When you type “Rick Santorum weird” into google you get 989k results. Think Progress has a post with the prosaic title ” Rick Santorum’s 10 Weirdest Statements.”
Before we get to those, the ultimate Santorum weirdness (so far) is this quote from Letters to Gabriel, written by Karen Garver Santorum, the wife of the candidate. (Chamblee54 does not ordinarily hold personal tragedy up to ridicule. However, this is in the public record. The perp wrote a book. The children were 5, 3, and 1 at the time of this story.) The quote is from bs alert
“Santorum and his wife, Karen Garver Santorum, have six children. … In 1996, their son Gabriel Michael was born prematurely and lived for only two hours (a sonogram taken before Gabriel was born revealed that his posterior urethral valve was closed and that the prognosis for his survival was therefore poor). Karen Santorum wrote a book about the experience: Letters to Gabriel: The True Story of Gabriel Michael Santorum. In it, she writes that the couple brought the deceased infant home from the hospital and introduced the dead child to their living children as “your brother Gabriel” and slept with the body overnight before returning him to the hospital.” And now, the rest of the top ten.
1. “In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be….If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything.” [4/2003]
2. “Is anyone saying same-sex couples can’t love each other? I love my children. I love my friends, my brother. Heck, I even love my mother-in-law. Should we call these relationships marriage, too?” [5/22/2008]
3. On repeal of DADT: “I’m worried when many people will stand up and say, ‘well whatever the Generals want.’ I’m not too sure that we haven’t indoctrinated the Officer Corps in this country that they can actually see straight to make the right decisions.” [2/20/2010]
4. “I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people.” [1/19/2011]
5. “Marriage is an institution that’s a bridge too far for too many African-American woman and is not desirable among African-American males….I think [Obama] has to realize that flying to New York is…self-indulgent. Go down to the corner bar and have a drink, a shot and a beer.” [6/2/2009]
6. In far too many families with young children, both parents are working, when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might find they don’t both need to….The radical feminists succeeded in undermining the traditional family and convincing women that professional accomplishments are the key to happiness. [‘It Takes A Family,’ 7/6/2005]
7. Santorum responded to the Pentagon’s decision rescind its invitation to evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at the upcoming National Day over his statement that Islam is “evil” by saying that Graham’s comment was “a reasonable statement at the time.” [3/23/2010]
8. “I think the Democrats are actually worried [Obama] may go to Indonesia and bow to more Muslims.” [3/23/2010]
9. “The creeping Sharia throughout Europe and here in this country and in Canada. The Islamization of Europe that is already on the way and will visit these shores not too soon is a concern for us and something that we need to identify and we need to talk about and we need to fight with ounce of our being. [2/28/2009]
10. “Now we have the Attorney General confirming to Osama bin Laden just bide your time and the effeminate and pampered Americans will cower away.” [2/28/2009]
Bonus If this is not enough, be sure to visit spreading Santorum. The more hits the site gets, the higher it’s google ranking is. The fun never stops.
The facebook friend (who is pretty cool in real life) started this adventure with this comment: “If one more person posts that bogus Santorum quote as fact, I will shoot myself. Satire is lovely, but not when people don’t even bother to fact check anymore. In other news, I’m out of cigarettes.”
This inspired three comments. “any negative publicity that brings that asshole into question is worth posting. God forbig anyone post any untruths about our President. Anyone should verify the source of any information beyond “saw it on the internet”. LOL In other news, I miss your face!””Google “bogus Santorum quote” and you get 98 million results.””I mean the one about gay porn and the Taliban going viral right now.”
Rick Santorum is a loose cannon. (The frothy mix is generally a loose product as well.) With a personality like that, it is tough to tell real from fake. With Americans dreading the rest of this Presidential campaign, it is only natural to exaggerate the strange things said by the former senator.
The offending misquote is: 
“While the Obama Department of Justice seems to favor pornographers over children and families, that will change under a Satorum Administration. I will ban all pornography. Especially gay pornography. Gay pornography is the reason people choose the gay lifestyle or what I call the deathstyle. If we got rid of that, homosexuality would be gone within a matter of months. This is one of only a few things I see eye to eye on with the Taliban.”
The top result is from that trusty advertiser of insurance products, snopes. “The quote cited in the Example block at the head of this page about “banning all pornography — specially gay pornography” is not something that was actually stated by Rick Santorum; it’s a spoof combining elements from the candidate’s above-cited statement on pornography and his previously expressed views on homosexuality. This item originated as a graphic image posted on Facebook to the Presidential Quotes section of Americans for a More American America, a political satire site.”
With the exception of the attached gif, the rest of the first page results were boring. Glenn Beck was listed, but PG cannot find any Santorum. It might blend in.
Author Insults
These author insults were borrowed from flavorwire. HT to Andrew Sullivan The pictures are from The Library of Congress This is a repost.
25. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound “A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”
24. Virginia Woolf on Aldous Huxley “All raw, uncooked, protesting.”
23. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw “An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”
22. Joseph Conrad on D.H. Lawrence “Filth. Nothing but obscenities.”
21. Lord Byron on John Keats (1820) “Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.”
20. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad “I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.”
19. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling “Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.”
18. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen “Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.”
17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes “Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”
16. Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire (1864) “I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.”
15. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
14. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
13. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote “He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.”
12. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”
11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972) “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”
10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876) “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”
09. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
08. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger “I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”
07. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923) “Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’…. One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!”
06. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning “I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.”
05. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948) “I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”
04. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898) “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
03. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce “the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”
02. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922) “A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”
01. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928) “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”
Bonus. Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.”
Bonus two, a comment to the original post.: RomanHans Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
Bonus Three, from Flannery O’Connor “I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
Thomas Jefferson Said What?
PG was wasting time with facebook when he saw a friend say “Damn I love this quote”. The passage being praised was “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Desmond Tutu. The rhetoric alert started to flash. These days, the wolf and the sheep buy their clothes at the same Walmart. To hear some oppressors talk, they are the ones under attack. It is tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Often you can make things worse by getting mixed up. Sometimes the best thing to do is mind your own business.
Ok, now that is out of the way. Some lines sound good, but don’t hold up to a bit of thinking. As for the veracity of the quote, Desmond Tutu may very well have said it. (or maybe one of his rivals said it, and Mr. Tutu copied it.) The quote has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Patrick Henry, and probably others. Almost no one has a source, for the quote, from the dead white guys.
A post called MISQUOTING THE FOUNDERS did not mince words. “The only problem with this scene that has been repeated many times across the country is that Thomas Jefferson never said that, never wrote that, and quite possibly never thought it. Our aspiring politician had fallen victim to the perils of popular misattribution. You could fill a book with misquotes and misattributed quotes we hear repeated regularly today. Right now if I Google “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent” the entire first page of results wrongly attribute it to Thomas Jefferson. The quote and its many variants have been attributed in the past to Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, but no record exists of the quote in any of their writings or contemporary accounts.”
On November 13, 1787, Mr. Jefferson wrote a letter to William Smith. The letter is full of zesty quotes. “What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
A few lines above that, Mr. Jefferson said “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” Twenty years after he wrote this, Mr. Jefferson was President. He probably did not want to deal with a revolution when he was President.
Getting back to the quote about tyranny, Martin Porter wrote an entertaining essay, A study of a Web quotation. He gives credit, or blame, to Edmund Burke. First, a list of different versions is presented. This is a clue that something is awry. The conclusion: “There is no original. The quote is bogus, and Burke never said it. It is a pseudo-quote, and corresponds to real quotes in the same way that urban legends about the ghost hitch-hiker vanishing in the back of the car and alligators in the sewers correspond to true news stories.”
Mr. Porter wrote a follow up essay, Four Principles of Quotation. These principles are: Principle 1 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus. Principle 2 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source. Principle 3 (for quoters) Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source. Principle 4 (for quoters) Only quote from works that you have read.
If these principles were to be used, then there would be a lot less hotheaded talking on the intercom. Those who are trying to influence you to the justice of their cause will not want you to read this. Pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. These pictures are Union soldiers, from the War Between the States. When war is discussed, all inspiring quotes are in doubt.
This is a repost. It is written like James Joyce. In the past year, doing due diligence on alleged quotes has become a hobby. Many people don’t care who said it, if they agree with the thoughts expressed. The prevailing thought is that an idea becomes more true with a famous name at the end. If the famous person is deceased, and cannot defend his/her reputation, that is not a problem. People do not like being told that Santa Claus does not exist.
Chamblee54 
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