Quotes and aphorisms

[DarkCoffee]

I quote the one on my signature

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.
G. Orwell - Animal Farm

[pietmau]

"Predictions are difficult, especially about the future"
Yogi Berra

[pietmau]

"I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don't always agree with them"
George W. Bush

[pietmau]

"All generalizations are dangerous, even this one."
Alexandre Dumas, fils

[Rupert]

[...] there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong".


H. L. Mencken,
Prejudices: Second Series by , Chapter 4: The Divine Afflatus, Start Page 155, Borzoi: Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1920, p. 158.

I've seen this quotation attributed to Mark Twain, George Bernard Shaw, Umberto Eco and various other authors, some anonymous some fantastic.
On the Net one happens to stumble upon a great number of generic quotations, which are all invariably ascribed to a number of prestigious and unquestionable moral, political, cultural… human authorities, without ever mentioning the source.
One finds the quotation very fitting to a specific circumstance or perfect to express a precise thought about something and one tries to search the writings of said authors… and there’s nothing there.

It happened to me with this quote. It was given as from the “Pendolo di Foucault”, written by Umberto Eco. But Eco makes his statement in a generic way and in fact he quotes someone else.
It took me a wile to track down the original. And here we are.

The moral of the story is: there is always a well-known [Internet] solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.