- WIST is my personal collection of quotations, curated for thought, amusement, turn of phrase, historical significance, or sometimes just (often-unintentional) irony.
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Popular Quotables
- “Wealth and Poverty,” speech, National… (7,877)
- Agamemnon, ll. 175-183 [tr. Johnston (2007)] (6,009)
- “The Lesson for Today,” A Witness Tree (1942) (5,939)
- “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933) (5,100)
- Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962) (4,886)
- “On The Conduct of Life” (1822) (4,258)
- “In Search of a Majority,” Speech,… (3,929)
- “Get a Knife, Get a Dog, but Get Rid of… (3,750)
- Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907) (3,559)
- “A Cult of Ignorance,” Newsweek (21 Jan 1980) (3,433)
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Adams, John • Bacon, Francis • Bible • Bierce, Ambrose • Billings, Josh • Butcher, Jim • Chesterton, Gilbert Keith • Churchill, Winston • Einstein, Albert • Eisenhower, Dwight David • Emerson, Ralph Waldo • Franklin, Benjamin • Fuller, Thomas (1654) • Gaiman, Neil • Galbraith, John Kenneth • Gandhi, Mohandas • Goethe, Johann von • Hazlitt, William • Heinlein, Robert A. • Hoffer, Eric • Huxley, Aldous • Ingersoll, Robert Green • James, William • Jefferson, Thomas • Johnson, Lyndon • Johnson, Samuel • Kennedy, John F. • King, Martin Luther • La Rochefoucauld, Francois • Lewis, C.S. • Lincoln, Abraham • Mencken, H.L. • Orwell, George • Pratchett, Terry • Roosevelt, Eleanor • Roosevelt, Theodore • Russell, Bertrand • Seneca the Younger • Shakespeare, William • Shaw, George Bernard • Stevenson, Adlai • Stevenson, Robert Louis • Twain, Mark • Watterson, Bill • Wilde, Oscar- Only the 45 most quoted authors are shown above. Full author list.
Recent Feedback
- 8-Jan-21 - ***Dave Does the Blog on Speech to the electors of Bristol (3 Nov 1774).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Republic, Book 1, 347c.
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on “On The Conduct of Life” (1822).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Nobel prize acceptance speech (10 Dec 1962).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on Letter to Clara Rilke (1 Jan 1907).
- 4-Jan-21 - Doing the Numbers, 12/2020 | WIST on “The Triumph of Stupidity” (10 May 1933).
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Quotations about detail
Note that not all quotations have been tagged, so the Search function may find additional quotations on this topic.
I attended to some of the business on my table to-day. Many matters of minor importance and of detail remain on my table to be attended to. The public have no idea of the constant accumulation of business requiring the President’s attention. No President who performs his duties faithfully and conscientiously can have any leisure. If he entrusts the details and smaller matters to subordinates constant errors will occur. I prefer to supervise the whole operations of the government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties very great.
James K. Polk (1795-1849) American lawyer, politician, US President (1845-1849)
Diary entry (29 Dec 1848)
(Source)
A technical objection is the first refuge of a scoundrel.
The more finished the character, the more striking is its individuality.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) American essayist, lecturer, poet
“Trust Yourself,” sermon (1830)
Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything.
Wyatt Earp (1848-1929) American law officer, gambler, saloon keeper
(Attributed)
We cannot define anything precisely! If we attempt to, we get into that paralysis of thought that comes to philosophers who sit opposite each other, one saying to the other, “You don’t know what you are talking about!”. The second one says, “What do you mean by know? What do you mean by talking? What do you mean by you?” and so on.
Richard Feynman (1918-1988) American physicist
The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Volume I, 8-2 “Motion” (20 Oct 1961)
(Source)
It is only a step from victory to disaster. My experience is that, in a crisis, some detail always decides the issue.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) French emperor, military leader
Letter to Tallyrand (7 Oct 1797)
(Source)
Napoleon's Letters [tr. J. M. Thompson (1934)]
