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Scarabin

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"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, and most fools do."

 

Benjamin Franklin

Related: Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.

 

Usually attributed to either Abraham Lincoln or Mark Twain. But there's apparently no evidence that either of them used it.

 

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/17/remain-silent/

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FYP

 

OK - maybe not Berra, or Bohr

 

:)

 

W. J. Moore, in Schrödinger, Life and Thought (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1989), p. 320 refers to this as an "old Danish proverb" that Bohr was fond of quoting. All Danes, however, know that it was the cartoonist Storm P. who said it first:

»Det er svært at spå, især om fremtiden«.

http://chaosbook.blo...dk-citater.html

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Heh. I used to have a pretty good memory, but I lost it somewhere, and now I'm not sure where to look for it. :P

 

"In the morning I will be sober, and you will still be ugly". -- Sir Winston Churchill.

 

Churchill's interlocutor here is supposed to have been Lady Astor (originally from Danville, VA USA, and the first female UK MP, I think). It is really not a very witty remark, more nasty than anything else, and I prefer to think Churchill did not, in fact, say anything so uncouth to a lady, despite their political and personal enmity.

 

 

A far better exchange is this:

 

Lady Astor: If you were my husband I would poison your coffee!

 

Churchill: If you were my wife I would drink it.

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Spanish Civil War Communist leader Dolores Ibarruri (aka "La Pasionaria"):

 

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

 

Ibarruri spent almost 40 years in exile after her side's defeat. When she returned after Franco's death she was reelected by the same district she had represented before the war.

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Spanish Civil War Communist leader Dolores Ibarruri (aka "La Pasionaria"):

 

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

 

Ibarruri spent almost 40 years in exile after her side's defeat. When she returned after Franco's death she was reelected by the same district she had represented before the war.

 

Sorry but I can't resist saying I always thought that was Ireland's national motto! A possible alternative is: "At the first sign of crisis the Irish drop to their knees, either to pray or to shoot".

 

:D

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