59
votes
What is the source of quote attributed to W.E.B. Du Bois: "When you have mastered numbers..."
The quote is by Harold Geneen from his 1984 book Managing.
I first found evidence of this from Wikiquote:
When you have mastered the numbers, you will in fact no longer be reading numbers, any ...
- 4,072
56
votes
Accepted
What is the source of quote attributed to W.E.B. Du Bois: "When you have mastered numbers..."
Good editor. I wouldn't have thought to challenge that, but its true that numbers weren't exactly Du Bois' thing. Not saying he wasn't good with them, just that isn't what he's famous for, or spent ...
- 115k
50
votes
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Did any leader say "We may have lost the battle, but not the war"?
Charles de Gaulle, shortly before French surrender (The Appeal of 18 June - 18/06/1940): "France has lost the battle but she has not lost the war." (Source: The Lincoln Institute). Delivered from the ...
- 546
46
votes
Accepted
Did Benjamin Franklin say "Holland is not a nation but a shop"? Why?
From The Complete Works of Benjamin Franklin (published 1888), clipped from a letter to Charles Dumas, dated 6 Aug, 1781:
Some writer, I forget who, says that Holland is no longer a nation but a
...
- 37.2k
40
votes
Accepted
Did Lord Acton ever say "freedom faces four major challenges"?
That appears to be adapted from a passage in "The History of Freedom in Antiquity", which was both an essay and a lecture Lord Acton once gave.
Liberty, next to religion, has been the ...
- 96.9k
39
votes
Accepted
Did Martin Luther ever say "The prosperity of a country depends ... "?
Yes, he did write that. Easily verifiable when going ad fontes, as real historians should always do.
That is: the language presented in the quote is thoroughly modernised, and thus mangled into ...
37
votes
Accepted
Where does Lincoln say the South wants us to believe as they believe?
The speech was in 1860 when Lincoln was seeking the Republican nomination for president. He was addressing the problem of the slave states, whose rebellion was already foreseen.
These natural, and ...
- 13.8k
34
votes
Accepted
Who said: "Armies prepare to fight their last war, rather than their next war"?
I think this adage is very old and has been rephrased countless times (though with slight modifications), but the modern English adaption might be from the 20th century:
King Wuling, "A talent ...
- 10.7k
34
votes
Accepted
Who said "If I want the opinion of the middle classes, I'll ask Her Majesty"?
This has been quoted a few times, in slight variation, like here, with attribution indeed to Disraeli:
— Harry Blamires: "The Victorian Age of Literature", Longman literature guides, ...
- 80.2k
33
votes
What is the context for Napoleon's quote "[the Austrians] did not know the value of five minutes"?
In his book Pushing to the Front (1894), Orison Swett Marden wrote:
Napoleon laid great stress upon that ‘supreme moment,’ that ‘nick of time’ which occurs in every battle, to take advantage of ...
- 4,621
31
votes
Accepted
Did Sir Isaac Newton ever claim that his mind in 1666 was "remarkably fit for invention"?
I believe the authors are paraphrasing a fairly well-known extract from a draft of a letter from Newton to Pierre Des Maizeaux, written in 1718. The extract in full reads as follows:
In the ...
- 77k
26
votes
What is the oldest authentic example of people complaining about modern times and the young?
600 - 300 BC
The counts of the indictment are luxury, bad manners, contempt for authority, disrespect to elders, and a love for chatter in place of exercise. …
Children began to be the tyrants, not ...
- 984
26
votes
Accepted
Source of quote attributed to Florence Nightingale: To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics
The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations has the following citation for that quote:
(apologies for the limited quality of the scan. I'm using my hand-held scanner.)
As their source, they cite The Life, ...
- 77k
25
votes
What is the source for this quote from the French Revolution?
L’Histoire en citation mentions this quote:
Donnez un verre de sang à ce cannibale : il a soif !
which I would translate as:
Give a glass of blood to this cannibal: he is thirsty!
It is attributed ...
- 5,729
23
votes
Accepted
Did Julius Caesar say: "Africa, I have grabbed you"?
It apparently happened during Caesar's campaign against Scipio and Juba in 47BC, part of the wider Roman Civil War that was fought from 49–45BC. The story was recorded by Suetonius (Life of Julius ...
- 77k
20
votes
What did Hitler mean with the following statement about Franco?
I am not sure what Hitler did know about the political details of Spain and I certainly cannot be sure of what he was thinking, so I will just laid out some data and thoughts:
While Franco's side is ...
- 12.3k
18
votes
Did Napoleon ever say «On s'engage et puis… on voit»?
The attribution certainly predates Lenin. A Google Book search indicates that it was well-established by at least 1890:
"Wenn Napoleon sagte: »on s'engage et puis on voit!« so bezeichnet er ...
- 1,241
18
votes
Accepted
Did Einstein really say this quote about time?
The oldest confirmed use of any version of this quote that I was able to find is from Ray Cummings' short story The Time Professor, published in the Jan. 8, 1921 issue of Argosy All-Story Weekly (...
- 2,738
17
votes
Source of the Napoleon "God/Devil/immortal" quote
Napoleon is widely described as either a demigod or a demon / devil, though, as Danila Smirnov mentioned, not immortal. Might you be misremembering this, or perhaps something like it:
Napoleon . . ....
- 96.9k
17
votes
Who said this quote about assimilation?
It may this line from E. Franklin Frazier, 1962:
The Negro, according to Adams, could only be partially assimilated or, in our language, integrated but not assimilated.
To which his definition of ...
- 80.2k
16
votes
Did Diderot say "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest"?
Like most internet “quotes”, this is actually fake. But Diderot said something quite similar in his poem: “Les Éleuthéromanes” :
J'en atteste les temps; j'en appelle à tout âge;
Jamais au ...
- 9,578
16
votes
Accepted
Where did Otto von Bismarck say "lying awake all night, hating"?
1) 1897
The earliest reference I could find is Christoph von Tiedemann on p. 42 of Persönliche Erinnerungen an den Fürsten Bismarck (S. Hirze, 1898, link) based on a 1897 talk:
"ich habe nicht ...
- 647
16
votes
Who first said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."?
The Yale Book of Quotations (edited by Fred R. Shapiro) mentions several quotations related to that one. The most likely inspiration for Kennedy's line seems to be the following passage from Khalil ...
- 466
15
votes
Accepted
Who is the historical figure in McCarthy's speech, "When a great democracy is destroyed..."?
Probably Abraham Lincoln.
While the specific "quote" is almost certainly manufactured, the core idea could easily have been taken from Lincoln's Lyceum Address. In that speech, Lincoln warned that ...
- 96.9k
15
votes
What did Richelieu mean by his "six lines" quote?
The idea originated with the memorialist Françoise Bertaut de Motteville who only entered the French court after Richelieu had died, so she was reporting rumors she heard from people who knew ...
- 37.7k
15
votes
Accepted
Who is Alexandra K. Trenfor? Is this quote accurate?
It's apparently a mystery. Cursory googling using the date tools suggests that the quote attributed to her began to appear out of nowhere in Facebook's early days, and it has been a mystery ever since....
- 23.1k
14
votes
Accepted
Which version of Napoleon's "Europe is a Molehill" quote is correct?
Your last quote from Bourrienne seems to be the most correct version. Essentially, the context is that Napoleon held a very high opinion of the East and wanted to organize expeditions at least as far ...
- 3,993
14
votes
Accepted
Is there a term for the principle of preferring earlier statements over later statements made by historical eye witnesses?
I don't believe there is a canonical name for that one principle, all by itself. Rather this is one of the common principles of Source Criticism, which are intended to be used together (highlighting ...
- 115k
13
votes
What did Richelieu mean by his "six lines" quote?
The attribution may well be apocryphal.
In the Wikipedia entry on Armand Jean du Plessis de Richelieu, the phrase is attributed to Richelieu himself, either in Mémoires or in Testament politique. ...
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