It Has Been Said

IT HAS BEEN SAID and collected by HAROLD BOXENBAUM* "Life is 6 to 5 against."—Damon Runyon "In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals : lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime."—K. R. Popper "No man is a hero to his valet."—Madame Anne Marie Cornuel "Grace is more beautiful than beauty."—Ralph Waldo Emerson "If there is any science man really needs it is the one I teach, of how to occupy properly that place in creation that is assigned to man, and how to learn from it what one must be in order to be a man."—Immanuel Kant "Natural selection is a mechanism for generating an exceedingly high degree of improbability."—R. A. Fisher "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."—Henry David Thoreau "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."—William Shakespeare "Volumes might be written upon the impiety of the pious."—Herbert Spencer "Seek simplicity and distrust it."—Alfred North Whitehead "Reality isjust a crutch for people who can't deal with drugs."—Lily Tomlin "An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted."—Arthur Miller "A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices."—Edward R. Murrow "Sight is a faculty; seeing an art."—George Beston *Address: 5720 Sovereign Drive, Cincinnati, Ohio 45241. Perspectives in Biology andMedicine, 34, 2 ¦ Winter 1991 \ ilo "But there is no real difference between a childish impossibility and an adult one; the only thing that the person achieves is a practiced self-deceit—what we call die 'mature' character."—Ernest Becker "I used to be indecisive, but now I'm not so sure."—Boscoe Pertwee "No tyranny is more fierce than the tyranny of morality. Everything is sacrificed to it."—P. D. Ouspensky "The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat."—Lily Tomlin "When choosing between two evils, I always like to take the one I've never tried before."—Mae West "Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life."—Eric Hoffer "Wisdom is ofttimes nearer when we stoop than when we soar."—William Wordsworth "Neutrality is at times a greater sin than belligerence."—Justice Brandeis "Conform and be dull."—James Frank Dobie "Real politics are the possession and distribution of power."—Benjamin Disraeli "You can tell the ideas of a nation by its advertisements."—George Norman Douglas "There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking."—Thomas Alva Edison "Fame is proof that people are gullible."—Ralph Waldo Emerson "No generalization is wholly true, not even this one."—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. "God will not look you over for medals, degrees or diplomas, but for scars."—Elbert Hubbard "The strongest man in the world is he who stands alone."—Henrik Ibsen "Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of the few; and number not voices, but weight them."—Immanuel Kant 276 I It Has Been Said "A Galileo could no more be elected president of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of self-illusion."—Henry Louis Mencken "Great intellects are skeptical."—Friedrich Nietzsche "Consistency is the quality of a stagnant mind."—John Sloan "The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool."—Richard Feynmann "To solve a problem it is necessary to think. It is necessary to think even to decide which facts to collect."—Robert Hutchins "Bisexuality: It immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night."—Woody Allen "A committee is a group of the unprepared, appointed by the unwilling, to do the unnecessary."—F. Allen "The whole is simpler than the sum of its...