close enuff for govt work

Post #321,139 by boxley 2/8/10 10:30:31 AM Reply	close enuff for govt work The Truth: This alleged quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero that began circulating on the Internet in October, 2008, is based on a true statement from the great Roman orator, but someone added a lot to it to make it match some of what the United States was facing economically. The actual quote is: "The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall." If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #321,149 by drook 2/8/10 11:07:03 AM Reply	Assistance to foreign hands != public assistance That addition makes makes the false version appear to be primarily about personal responsibility. The real quote was about the danger of over-reaching. Which I've been thinking about lately. Someone quoted the line about Switzerland recently: "Five hundred years of peace and democracy and what have they produced? The cuckoo clock?" My first thought was, "Well, that and five hundred years of peace and democracy." There's something to be said for an overdeveloped sense of "None of my business." Yes, the Nazis were evil, and keeping those deposits for all these decades seems wrong. But haven't (some) people been saying for a while now that you can't force people to embrace freedom/democracy/just-plain-goodness, they have to take it for themselves? Perhaps that's what Cicero was talking about, in not offering help to foreign hands. -- Drew
Post #321,152 by boxley 2/8/10 11:32:11 AM Reply	actually the above was a 1/2 assed apology to rand not serious. Cut n Paste on the net is easy and lazy If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)
Post #321,153 by rcareaga 2/8/10 11:47:54 AM Reply	Make it a full-assed apology and we'll talk Your "actual quote" comes word-for-word from that same Kansas City Star editorial. It probably made its way into living memory and thence onto the internets via hack novelist Taylor Caldwell's 1965 novel A Pillar of Iron, which is apparently littered with similar bogosities. For the Caldwell connection I am indebted to a 1971 letter to the Chicago Tribune by John H. Collins, Professor of History at Northern Illinois University, who added that a novelist "has a perfect right to put invented conversations and anecdotes into a novel, but should not represent these inventions as authentic history." Spurious quotations attributed to eminent characters of the past are by way of a minor hobby of mine, box. If I tell you one of these is of dodgy provenance you can take that assertion—but not the counterfeit nugget—to the bank. cordially,
Post #321,155 by boxley 2/8/10 11:52:38 AM Reply	full-assed it is always glad to get called on something, learn something new every day If we torture the data long enough, it will confess. (Ronald Coase, Nobel Prize for Economic Sciences, 1991)

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