Smart Stuff

A study of economics usually reveals that the best time to buy anything is last
year.
MARTY Allen
There are three things not worth running for - a bus, a woman, or a new economic
panacea: if you wait a bit, another will come along.
DERICK AMORY
Economists are people who work with numbers but who don’t have the personality
to […]

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art
into pedantry. Hence university education. G.B. Shaw
Applicants for places at university are now being asked if they intend to
concentrate on tests or protests.
John Cooper
A student who changes the course of history is probably taking an exam.
A university is what a college becomes when the […]

The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.
AESOP
Conceit is God’s gift to little men.
BRUCE BARTON
I know he is, and he adores his maker.
Benjamin Disraeli
Replying to a remark made in defense
of John Bright that he was a self-made man
I am being frank about myself in this book. I tell of my first mistake on […]

If Voting Changed Anything,
They’d Make It Illegal.
BADGE
London, 1983
Have you ever seen a candidate talking to a rich person on television?
Art Buchwald
Be Thankful Only One of Them Can Win.
BUMPER STICKER

Let them hate, so long as they fear.
Lucius ACCIUS
(170-85 BC)
One camel does not make fun of the other camel’s hump.
African Proverb
Sorrow is like a precious treasure, shown only to friends.
African Proverb
The heart is not a knee that can be bent.
African Proverb
Wood already touched by fire is not hard to set alight.
African Proverb
Fire and gun […]

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about
it.
James Agate
Even in sin they are conventional. They have a rigid code of immorals.
EDWIN Allen
The English gentleman is always correct and never right.
EDWIN Allen
England: The place where the people fawn on the dogs.
EDWIN Allen
One has often wondered whether upon the whole […]

The spur of the moment is the essence of adventure.
Anthony ARMSTRONG-Jones
There are two ways to get to the top of an oak tree - you can climb it or you
can sit on an acorn.
R. Frank BROWN
Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.
Fred BUCY
I believe in getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.
G. […]

The mass production of distraction is now as much a part of the American way of
life as the mass production of automobiles.
C. Wright Mills

The majority of those who put together collections of verses or epigrams resemble those who eat cherries or oysters; they begin by choosing the best and end by eating everything.
CHAMFORT
Sometimes it seems the only accomplishment my education ever bestowed on me, the ability to think in quotations.
Margaret DRABBLE
Epigrams and truth are rarely commensurate. Truth […]

A woman’s place is in the House, and the Senate.
Slogan on American T-shirt
Men their rights and nothing more; women their rights and nothing less.
SUSAN B. Anthony
Equality may perhaps be a right, but no power on earth can ever turn it into a fact.
Honore de Balzac
What makes equality such a difficult business is that […]