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IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected byJOHN H. WHITLOCK* On originality: "It would be a mistaken homage to originality to do again badly what one feels to have been done better already. Obviously the right course in such cases is to plagiarize widi acknowledgements."—Arnold J. Toynbee On a sense ofhumor: "A sense of humor sharp enough to show a man his own absurdities will keep him from all sins, or nearly all, except those that are worth committing."—Samuel Butler On highereducation: "In our commendable zeal to eliminate snobbism in higher education, we may be inadvertendy institutionalizing slobbism in its place."— Logan Wilson On classes oftrustees: "Those of you who think you know it all are a great source ofexasperation to those of us who really do."—Anonymous On committees: "Committee meeting is a place where minutes are kept and hours are wasted."—Anonymous On learning: "You can learn from anybody! Even a stopped clock is right twice a day."—Anonymous On the new Left: "It is not the opinions as such which are so odd, it is the ignorance with which they are held. "Europe is perhaps more used than America to the idea that intellectuals are usually wrong. "Nonsense needs complex misdirection to make it sound plausible."—Robert Conquest On retirement: "Retirement parties are the last remnant of ritual slaughter in our society."—J. H. Whitlock Material appearing under diis tide is collected with the aim of making the serious a bit less serious, the ponderous a bit less heavy, and die reading hours a bit more fun. We invite you to share a collection of your humorous treasures with PBM readers. *New York State College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853. Perspectives in Biology andMedicine · Summer 1981 | 593 On philosophy: "To the mildly skeptical, the whole philosophical movement comes down to the diesis that if you talk long enough about any subject you will find that you have nothing to say about it."—C. H. Waddington On biological research: "Physiology departments, for example, award a number of postgraduate degrees annually for the startling discovery that oxygen consumption tends to increase with increasing temperature, provided always that the experimental animal is not actually boiled alive."—Arthur W. Ghent On Occam's razor updated: "If simple stupidity is inadequate to account for a complicated mess it is necessary to find a more elaborate hypothesis."—tRobin Williams REFLECTIONS FROM THE CUNIC On Feelings—Not only do all of us have similar feelings, problems and needs, but on close scrutiny it would seem the lives we live are very alike. True, the length and locale may vary, the dimensions and quality may differ, but, in a very real sense, externals aside, we are all brothers and sisters under the skin, and on its own terms the meaning of each life is much the same. To see this, it is necessary to slice experience very thin, much as a microtome sections a surgical specimen so that microscopic examination can be made at the basic, cellular level. An event, like a tissue, must be dissected by the imagination beyond the obvious, to the level of its simplest elements, if we are to reach that layer of experience where reality hides. It was a wise man, indeed, who once said, "Truth, like beauty, when unadorned, is adorned the most." Irwin M. Siegel 594 I JohnH.Whühck ¦ ItHasBeenSaid ...

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