Category Archives: Quotes

As every second post on this site is a quote. You’ll find a deep and broad variety of quotes under this category, which overlap with several other tags and categories. Many of the quotes are larded with links for deeper reading on the subject of the quote, or connections between the subject of the quotes and other people, things, or ideas. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

Descartes, Famously, on Ontology and Epistemology

Posted on April 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

“I think, therefore I am.”

Rene Descartes,  Le Discours de la Method (1637)

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Book of Answers: Tennessee Williams

Posted on April 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

“How long was the first run of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)? The play opened in New York in 1947 and ran for 855 performances.”

Excerpted from: Corey, Melinda, and George Ochoa. Literature: The New York Public Library Book of Answers. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.

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The Doubter’s Companion: Amorality

Posted on April 28, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Amorality: A quality admired and rewarded in modern organizations, where it is referred to through metaphors such as professionalism and efficiency.

Amorality is corporatist wisdom. It is one of the terms which highlights the confusion in society between what is officially taught as a value and what is actually rewarded by the structure.

Immorality is doing wrong of our own volition. Amorality is doing it because a structure or an organization expects us to do it. Amorality is thus worse than immorality because it involves denying our responsibility and therefore our existence as anything more than animal.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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Henry Adams on Estimating Intelligence

Posted on April 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

“There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.”

Henry Adams

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Term of Art: Sound/Symbol Association

Posted on April 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

“sound/symbol association: The idea that certain sounds are paired with specific symbols.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Write It Right: Declared for Said

Posted on April 21, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Declared for Said. To a newspaper reporter no one ever seems to say anything; all ‘declare.’ Like ‘alleged’ (which see) the word is tiresome exceedingly.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. Write it Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults. Mineola, NY: Dover, 2010.

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Barbara W. Winder on Knowledge and Wisdom

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

“As our knowledge is converted to wisdom, the door to opportunity is locked.”

Barbara W. Winder

Excerpted from: Howe, Randy, ed. The Quotable Teacher. Guilford, CT: The Lyons Press, 2003.

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Cliche

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

“Cliché (noun): An expression so overused as to be trite, such as a hackneyed idiom or dead metaphor; stereotyped, overworked idea; evident commonplace. Adjective: cliché, clichéd.

‘The language is a double-depressant of numbing, cliché-ridden prose that ranges from Lady Bountiful pitter-patter to tearoom philosophizing.’ Colman McCarthy, The Washington Post”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Rotten Reviews: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

Posted on April 12, 2023 | Leave a comment

“The publisher promises that anyone who has a deep love for the well-made English sentence will find these stories richly rewarding. Perhaps so. But there is every chance that the rest of us—those who prefer to curl up with a good book—will be left gasping with boredom instead.”

Book World

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

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George Orwell on Credulity

Posted on April 6, 2023 | Leave a comment

“There are some things only intellectuals are crazy enough to believe.”

George Orwell

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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