We Prefer To Believe That The Absence Of Inverted Commas Guarantees The Originality Of A Thought, Whereas It May Be Merely That The Utterer Has Forgotten Its Source.

We Prefer To Believe That The Absence Of Inverted Commas Guarantees The Originality Of A Thought, Whereas It May Be Merely That The Utterer Has Forgotten Its Source.

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We prefer to believe that the absence of inverted commas guarantees the
originality of a thought, whereas it may be merely that the utterer has
forgotten its source.
-- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play"

Related:

Cheese -- milk's leap toward immortality. -- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play
When you read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before.
You see more in you than there was before. -- Clifton Fadiman, "Any Number Can Play", 1957...
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
-- Clifton Fadima...
Passions are fashions. -- Clifton Fadima
To divide one's life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic.
The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth amd Sun....
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech. -- Clifton Fadima
In the absence of any evidence tending to show that possession or use of a 'shotgun having a barrel of less than eighteen inches in length' at this time has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia
we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument....