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Only fools and philosophers waste time on the unknowable.

Rex Stout

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Rex Stout
Age: 88 †
Born: 1886
Born: December 1
Died: 1975
Died: October 27
Novelist
Radio Personality
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Noblesville
Indiana
Philosophers
Fools
Philosopher
Waste
Fool
Time
Unknowable

More quotes by Rex Stout

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Chili is one of the great peasant foods. It is one of the few contributions America has made to world cuisine. Eaten with corn bread, sweet onion, sour cream, it contains all five of the elements deemed essential by the sages of the Orient: sweet, sour, salty, pungent, and bitter.
Rex Stout
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Women don't require motives that are comprehensible to my intellectual processes.
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What do I believe in? Belief means faith, and there's only one damned thing in the world I have any faith in. That's the idea of American democracy, because it seems to me so obvious that that's the only sensible way to run human affairs.
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I love to make a mistake. It is my only assurance that I cannot reasonably be expected to assume the responsibility of omniscience.
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All my important decisions are made for me by my subconscious. My frontal lobes are just kidding themselves that they decide anything at all. All they do is think up reasons for the decisions that are already made.
Rex Stout
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As a professional writer of detective stories, I string along with the ballplayers. I love a ball game.
Rex Stout
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It is always wiser, where there is a choice, to trust inertia. It is the greatest force in the world.
Rex Stout
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Dignities are like faces no two are the same.
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Wolfe scowled at her. I could see he was torn with conflicting emotions. A female in his kitchen was an outrage. A woman criticizing his or Fritz's cooking was an insult. But corned beef hash was one of life's toughest problems, never yet solved by anyone.
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The trouble with an alarm clock is that what seems sensible when you set it seems absurd when it goes off
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To say that a man is a reasoning animal is a very different thing than to say that most of man's decisions are based on his rational process. That I don't believe at all.
Rex Stout
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A man may debar nonsense from his library of reason, but not from the arena of his impulses.
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I love books, food, music, sleep, people who work, heated arguments, the United States of America, and my wife and children. I dislike politicians, preachers, genteel persons, people who do not work or are on vacation, closed minds, movies, loud noises, and oiliness.
Rex Stout
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We are all vainer of our luck than of our merits.
Rex Stout
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There are only two kinds of books which you can write and be pretty sure you're going to make a living — cook books and detective stories.
Rex Stout
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Opinions, from experts, cost money.
Rex Stout
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The only two kinds of books could earn an American writer a living are cookbooks and detective novels.
Rex Stout
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God made you and me, in certain respects, quite unequal, and it would be futile to try any interference with His arrangements.
Rex Stout
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Everything in a story should be credible.
Rex Stout
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I will ride my luck on occasion, but I like to pick the occasion.
Rex Stout