I strive to be brief & become obscure - Horace
Great men are often tardy with their truths - Elizabeth Jennings
Thoughts are real. Even thoughts of unreal things - Erica Wagner
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it isn’t utterly absurd. Indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible - Bertrand Russell
Start from apparently self-evident premises, argue with impeccable logic, reach an unacceptable conclusion, - & beat a hasty retreat - Isaiah Berlin on English empiricism.
Making small, almost justifiable smoothing adjustments to the numbers can easily become a slippery slope to a large deliberate fraud - Patrick Hosking
In 1855 Mr Thomas Blackwell of Crosse & Blackwell explained to a Select Committee that his firm had recently given up the habit of coppering pickles & fruits & artificially colouring sauces, despite consumers initially being disgruntled to discover that pickles were actually brown not green & that anchovies were not naturally a nice bright red - Kathryn Hughes
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change - Charles Darwin
