
Who Really Said That? - gruseom
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Who-Really-Said-That-/141559/
======
nemo1618
It's funny that this should turn up on HN, which is the true source[1] of this
quote, often misattributed[2] to Descartes:

"Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually
be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they're in good
company."

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1012082)

[2]:
[https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=Any+community+that+get...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=Any+community+that+gets+its+laughs+by+pretending+to+be+idiots)

------
Fuzzwah
I recently went down the WAS rabbit hole for "The Harder I Practice, the
Luckier I Get" and came back up out of it with an earlier version which I
actually like more:

"The more you know, the more luck you have."

Which is attributed to the fantasy author L. Frank Baum, creator of the The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz, in a small collection of maxims from the book “The
Burman: His Life and Notions” dated 1896.

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/07/14/luck/)

~~~
gruseom
The Quote Investigator is the best. The site is the avocation of someone
pseudonymous who tracks these things down meticulously and has been building
up a sizeable repertoire. The great thing is that since nearly all these
quotations go back decades if not centuries, once one of them has been traced,
it's pretty much traced for good.

One of my favorites is [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/28/ford-faster-
horse](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/07/28/ford-faster-horse).

~~~
tokenadult
Yes, let me add to gruseom's endorsement of Quote Investigator. These days,
every time I see a quotation floating around among my Facebook friends, I
Google with appropriately chosen keywords, and almost always Quote
Investigator shows that the attribution is different from what people suppose.

------
gruseom
As someone who posts about quote orgins on HN often enough to wonder whether I
should self-deport as a crank, I heartily endorse this article. It is by far
the best description of the obsession.

And no, Picasso didn't say "Great artists steal". That's a WAS II. Well, kind
of a 1.5 really.

~~~
akkartik
Do you have a master list somewhere?

~~~
gruseom
Oh God no.

------
127001brewer
According to IMDB, and other websites, in the movie, "Point Break", Johnny
Utah (Keanu Reeves) is attributed with the following:

 _Wars of religion always make me laugh because basically you 're fighting
over who has the best imaginary friend._[1]

However, I have not heard this quote spoken by any character within the movie.
And a quick web search of a variation of the quote attributes it to
"anonymous". Does anyone know if this quote was actually spoken in the movie
"Point Break"?

1\.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102685/quotes?item=qt1561818](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102685/quotes?item=qt1561818)

~~~
jack-r-abbit
All I can offer is this: Three separate sites that have the script[1][2] (or a
transcription[3] of the movie) all fail to have that quote. None of them even
contain the word "imaginary" and only two (the scripts, not the transcription)
have the word "religion" once but in a scene description and not as dialogue.
I should note that the two scripts seem to be the same. (Although who really
knows where they got it. One could just copy the other.) But both are
different than the transcript.

[1] [http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Point-
Break.html](http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Point-Break.html) [2]
[http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/pointbreak.html](http://www.awesomefilm.com/script/pointbreak.html)
[3] [http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/p/point-break-
scr...](http://www.script-o-rama.com/movie_scripts/p/point-break-script-
transcript-keanu.html)

------
Sniperfish
Feels like an opportunity to link to SMBC: [http://www.smbc-
comics.com/?id=3123#comic](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3123#comic)

------
fusiongyro
I learned recently that the famous Dijkstra quote "Computer Science is no more
about computers than astronomy is about telescopes" is apparently a
misattribution (at least according to Wikiquote). But it is pithy and great,
and it has that Dijkstra ring to it. The author of this piece is on to
something with "crowdwriting."

~~~
brudgers
It's Ableson [in the video from the SICP course]:

 _This first thing we need to do is discuss the focus of 6.001. What is this
course all about? This seems quite obvious -- this is a course about computer
science. But we are going to claim in a rather strange way that this is not
really true._

 _First of all, it is not really about science. It is really much more about
engineering or art than it is about science. ...and it is not really about
computers. Now that definitely sounds strange! But let me tell you why I claim
it is not really about computers. I claim it is not really about computers in
the same way that physics is not really just about particle accelerators, or
biology is not really just about microscopes, or geometry is not really about
surveying instruments._

 _In fact, geometry is a good analogy to use here. It has also a terrible
name, which comes from two words: GHIA or earth, and METRA or measurement. And
to the ancient Egyptians, that is exactly what geometry was -- instruments for
measuring the earth, or surveying. Thousands of years ago, the Nile annually
flooded, and eventually retreated, wiping out most of the identifying
landmarks. It also deposited rich soil in its wake, making the land that it
flooded very valuable, but also very hard to keep track of._

 _As a consequence, the Egyptian priesthood had to arbitrate the restoration
of land boundaries after the annual flooding. Since there were no landmarks,
they needed a better way of determining boundaries, and they invented
geometry, or earth measuring. Hence, to the Egyptians, geometry was surveying
-- and about surveying instruments. This is a common effect. When a field is
just getting started, it’s easy to confuse the essence of the field with its
tools, because we usually understand the tools much less well in the infancy
of an area. In hindsight, we realize that the important essence of what the
Egyptians did was to formalize the notions of space and time which later led
to axiomatic methods for dealing with declarative, or What Is kinds of
knowledge. --- So geometry not really about measuring devices, but rather
about declarative knowledge._

 _So geometry is not really about surveying, it is actually fundamentally
about axioms for dealing with a particular kind of knowledge, known as
Declarative, or "what is true" knowledge._

 _By analogy to geometry, Computer Science is not really about computers -- it
is not about the tool. It is actually about the kind of knowledge that
computer science makes available to us. What we are going to see in this
course is that computer science is dealing with a different kind of knowledge
-- Imperative or "how to" knowledge. It is trying to capture the notion of a
process that causes information to evolve from one state to another, and we
want to see how we can uses methods to capture that knowledge_

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-
comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-
science/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-
spring-2005/lecture-notes/lecture1webhand.pdf)

~~~
fusiongyro
The quote doesn't occur in your source. Lots of computer scientists have
expressed this idea in various ways, but (and I hesitate to say something so
obvious it approaches tautology) it isn't the source for the quote if the
quote doesn't occur in it.

~~~
brudgers
Yes, indeed. That is why I provided the source of the misquote.

~~~
fusiongyro
Awfully cocky of you, assuming there's not a single earlier use of this
metaphor.

------
jamesbritt
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6402775](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6402775)

~~~
tokenadult
I remember the first submission of this interesting article. Often on HN, I
wonder, "Who really submitted that?" I'm still not sure why the duplicate
submission detector is as buggy as it is.

~~~
gruseom
I've always assumed it was deliberately left porous to compensate for the luck
of the draw. There's a lot of randomness in which articles get an initial
boost on /newest. If the duplicate detector were airtight, a lot of good
stories would die unseen. This way, they can have another shot at a
discussion.

Obviously one should not abuse this to post things that have already had a
good discussion or (worse) to promote uninteresting content.

I saw jamesbritt's submission a few days ago—it may even have been how I
learned about the article. I thought it was a shame that it fell through the
cracks, hence the repost.

------
norswap
Is the source of a quote really relevant though? Unless said source develop
the insight in a text (in which case the source should be easy to find, or if
it isn't having the name of the source won't help anyway), it does add no
value. Of course, it is natural to be curious.

~~~
jpmattia
> _Is the source of a quote really relevant though?_

It is a big requirement when using proof-by-authority.

------
gweinberg
"People will take your ideas more seriously if you tell them Benjamin Franklin
said it first."

\-- Mark Twain

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Twain? Or was it Comins?
[http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/31662.html](http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/31662.html)
:)

------
crazygringo
Obligatory Wikiquote "List of misquotations":

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations)

------
steveinator
Do what you want and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and
those who matter don't mind.

\--Not Dr. Suess?

~~~
gruseom
[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/04/those-who-
mind/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/04/those-who-mind/)

