veritas quotations

in the Christmas special of Downton Abbey.

admin — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 05:15:41 +0000

Sir Richard Carlisle: Do you enjoy these games? In which the player must appear ridiculous?
Dowager Countess of Grantham: Sir Richard, life is a game where the players must appear ridiculous.
Sir Richard Carlisle: Not my life.

in episode 2.6 of Downton Abbey, by the character of Lady Mary Crawley as played by Michelle Dockery.

admin — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 21:35:18 +0000

I don’t think we can say should about things that happen in war. It just happens and we should live with it.

writer of Episode 2.2 of Downton Abbey, for the character Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham, played by Hugh Bonneville.

admin — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 20:26:08 +0000

Not dreading it exactly, but it is a brave, new world we are heading for; no doubt about that. We must try to meet it with as much grace as we can muster.

in The Departed.

admin — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 00:13:18 +0000

Church wants you in your place. What sort of man wants to be kept in his place? Do this don’t do that, kneel, stand, kneel, stand…I mean if you go for that sort of thing…I don’t know what to do for you. A man makes his own way. No one gives it to you. You have to take it. Non serviam.

on his first project to write a language for a microprocessor with his partner, Bill Gates, in his memoir, Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft.

admin — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 20:14:03 +0000

If we’d been older or known better, Bill and I might have been put off by the task in front of us. But we were young and green enough to believe that we just might pull it off.

as quoted by Walter Isaacson in his biography, Steve Jobs.

admin — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 00:14:43 +0000

“There is something indeﬁnable in an entrepreneur, and I saw that in Steve,” he said. “He was interested not just in engineering, but also the business aspects. I taught him that if you act like you can do something, then it will work. I told him, ‘Pretend to be completely in control and people will assume that you are.’”

on Jon Stewart in the October 2011 issue of Esquire magazine in an article entitled, “Jon Stewart and the Burden of History“.

admin — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 18:08:20 +0000

Now look at him. It’s seven years later, and he’s aged like a president.

in his book Instructive Writings as cited by Heinrich Heine to whom the quotation is commonly misattributed.

admin — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:37:44 +0000

There are more fools in the world than there are people.

has this dictum attributed to him. The earliest reference to this dictum I have found is this Life magazine story about Edward Teller in 1954.

admin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 14:23:50 +0000

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.

[Though more popular, it is commonly shortened to: "An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."]

on page 308 of Peter’s Quotations in response to a passage from Tristam Shandy.

admin — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:27:41 +0000

Against logic there is no armor like ignorance.