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Oh, for goodness sakes! The "whole world" doesn't believe Einstein to be the author. With that reasoning, then perhaps when the "whole world" believed the earth to be flat it must have been true????
A simple five minute or less Google search will reveal to you the truth. If you choose to believe the truth, that is.
Okay, let me explain it to you like this. It is multi-faceted so don't get hung up on any one facet
1. It is a "quote" that has an important message.
2. Most people, attribute it to being from Einstein. Personally, I have heard it so attributed for decades.
3. If I attributed it to the people/persons your politically-driven/inspired people tell you penned it, most, if not nearly-all would say. "Wait a minute, that is an Einstein quote", (not Rumplestiltskin, or whoever you think wrote it), and credibility would immediately be lost as they would immediately conclude that I am attempting to do what I suspect you are attempting to do, i.e. re-write history to their own political purposes., and the point of the message would be lost.
Frankly, I don't care who wrote it - I care that it has a meaningful and relevant message. Attribute it to Saint Nick, if it pleases you, but I care that people focus on the message, not quibbling over who originally said it (and I seriously doubt if you, I, The New Yorker or anyone really have a clue as to that "fact").
BTW, do you know of any Bull Sharks in Hawaiian waters (fresh or salt).
BTW, I was one of the ones who for years believed that Einstein was the source of the insanity post. I was really disappointed when I did some research recently and found out that he did not say (or write) that.
If you care to followup on this, there are several websites I like which do fact-checking on quotes. Just scan down the opening page on this one, I think you'll begin to understand the nature of the problem, as they list quote after quote that are variously attributed online to three, four, sometimes many different people.
Another page investigates many quotes that are attributed to Einstein, most of which are not really his words, and a couple that are. Why, they even list a quote that is sometimes credited to Rita Mae Brown but which was actually by someone else.
It's an arcane little corner of literary sleuthing, but as a wordsmith and voracious reader I've been amused by it for years. Probably the quintessential guide to understanding the phenomenon, even if you only read the title, is "The Yogi Book," by Yogi Berra, subtitled "I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said."
If you care to followup on this, there are several websites I like which do fact-checking on quotes. If you just scan down the opening page on this one, I think you'll begin to understand the nature of the problem, as they list quote after quote that are variously attributed online to three, four, sometimes many different people.
And another page investigates many quotes that are attributed to Einstein, most of which are not really his words, and a couple that are. Why, they even list a quote that is sometimes credited to Rita Mae Brown but which was actually by someone else.
[URL]http://quoteinvestigator.com/[/URL]
It's an arcane little corner of literary sleuthing, but as a wordsmith and voracious reader I've been amused by it for years. Probably the quintessential guide to understanding the phenomenon, even if you only read the title, is "The Yogi Book," by Yogi Berra, subtitled "I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said."
[URL="http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Yogi_Book.html?id=B1ylPwAACAAJ"]The Yogi Book: "I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said" - Yogi Berra - Google Books[/URL]
But before I answer that, since we're talking about quotes, let me give you a little lesson on how to be considerate to others with the way you use the quoting feature here on the forum, since it has been suggested to you over and over again, expecting different results. First, here's what you just quoted of mine in order to ask your one-liner question:
Quote:
Originally Posted by OpenD
If you care to followup on this, there are several websites I like which do fact-checking on quotes. Just scan down the opening page on this one, I think you'll begin to understand the nature of the problem, as they list quote after quote that are variously attributed online to three, four, sometimes many different people.
Another page investigates many quotes that are attributed to Einstein, most of which are not really his words, and a couple that are. Why, they even list a quote that is sometimes credited to Rita Mae Brown but which was actually by someone else.
It's an arcane little corner of literary sleuthing, but as a wordsmith and voracious reader I've been amused by it for years. Probably the quintessential guide to understanding the phenomenon, even if you only read the title, is "The Yogi Book," by Yogi Berra, subtitled "I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said."
But if you had taken just a moment to edit the quote after you pulled it up on screen, it could have looked like this, and been just as clear. Probably more so.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OpenD
If you care to followup on this, there are several websites I like which do fact-checking on quotes.
See what I mean? That's all the quote you needed in this case, so quoting entire long posts, sometimes as many as 100 lines, as you have always done in the past, just to post a one line response, is in classic Netiquette terms, considered sloppy and rude. But it's easy to fix.
All you have to do, once you've got the whole quote up on the screen, is to highlight what is not essential and delete it. The only real rule to follow is to keep the entire beginning tag and end tag, because they contain computer code that tells the editor how to format the text. Both tags are contained with square brackets, which must be kept intact, but anything between them can be deleted at will. They look like this, but with square brackets in place of the parentheses: (QUOTE=OpenD;30359271) and the end tag: (/quote) Get the picture?
But back to your question... good fact checkers get as close to source material as they can, and the more unbiased and neutral their findings and the more open their research, the more people learn they can be relied on and trusted. In the literary sleuthing department it tends to be university professors and a few passionate amateurs doing this kind of poking around. In recent years computer databases and search tools have made the task much easier, and facts like this much easier to verify. And anyone can check the fact-checkers. Of course new facts do present themselves from time to time, so that earlier opinions must occasionally be revised. That's just good scholarship.
Here's a simple example. There's a database online with every single known word from Shakespeare's plays and poems in it... Shakespeare's Words | Home | William Shakespeare... so if someone claimed that Willy wrote the Insanity quote, I could easily check and report back that he never used the word "insanity." OK, how about "mistake," since one version of the quote uses that word? No, closely examining all 45 times the Bard used that word turns up nothing anything like this quote. See how that works?
Part of wisdom is being able to discern the difference between the trifle and the vital, the urgent vs the important.
I have hinted it to you before, but you didn't seem to get it.
What is important is the wisdom of the words, and their appropriateness to the situation at hand, not whether Einstein originated them, adopted them, repeated them, or never heard of them.
It matters only peripherally who originally wrote them, or a synonym for them - the vitality is in the wisdom they contain.
You focus on the author, I focus on the wisdom - HUGE difference.
TWhat is important is the wisdom of the words, and their appropriateness to the situation at hand, not whether Einstein originated them, adopted them, repeated them, or never heard of them.
Yes, as long as you don't get too hung up about how literal a meaning to attach to something like this. The quote in question is not what I would call "Big T Truth," like an absolute, but is more "little t truth," in which context is everything. After all, Ben Franklin famously said the opposite with "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again" and "Persistence will out!" Or wait, was that Aesop?
Quote:
It matters only peripherally who originally wrote them
To you it is peripheral. To people in the words business it is of vital interest. I have a good friend who makes her living with her inspirational writing and artwork, and she has to constantly police the marketplace for people who are reselling her work under their own name. This is the reason why copyrights are so important to creative people.
Quote:
You focus on the author, I focus on the wisdom - HUGE difference.
Actually, I honor both the wisdom and the creator. Huge difference.
BTW, congrats on successfully editing that quote. That also makes a huge difference.
RR, I just Googled "bull sharks Hawaii" and found that the answer is "no". Apparently they like warmer waters than the cool Pacific that we have in Hawaii.
That doesn't rule out other sharks in Hawaiian waters. Recently someone was bitten by a tiger shark (wasn't that what started this thread a l-o-n-g time ago?) off the Kona coast of the BI. There are also hammerheads, makos, etc. You can find the whole list at hawaiisharks.com.
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