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In ancient times they had no statistics so they had to fall back on lies.

Stephen Leacock

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Stephen Leacock
Age: 74 †
Born: 1869
Born: December 30
Died: 1944
Died: March 28
Economist
Humorist
Political Scientist
Writer
Hants
Stephen Butler Leacock
Economy
Lying
Times
Fall
Back
Statistics
Ancient
Computer
Lies

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The parent who could see his boy as he really is, would shake his head and say: 'Willie is no good I'll sell him.
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Presently I shall be introduced as 'this venerable old gentleman' and the axe will fall when they raise me to the degree of 'grand old man'. That means on our continent any one with snow-white hair who has kept out of jail till eighty.
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The sorrows and disasters of Europe always brought fortune to America.
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The Victorians needed parody. Without it their literature would have been a rank and weedy growth, over-watered with tears.
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Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.
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The landlady of a boarding-house is a parallelogram - that is, an oblong angular figure, which cannot be described, but which is equal to anything
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Each section of the British Isles has its own way of laughing, except Wales, which doesn't.
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It may be those who do most, dream most.
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There is an old motto that runs, If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. This is nonsense. It ought to read, If at first you don't succeed, quit, quit at once.
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In Canada we have enough to do keeping up with two spoken languages ... so we just go right ahead and use English for literature, Scotch for sermons, and American for conversation.
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Indeed I have always found that the only thing in regard to Toronto which faraway people know for certain is that McGill University is in it.
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In earlier times they had no statistics and so they had to fall back on lies. Hence the huge exaggerations of primitive literature, giants, miracles, wonders! It's the size that counts. They did it with lies and we do it with statistics: but it's all the same.
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Humour is essentially a comforter, reconciling us to things as they are in contrast to things as they might be.
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Anybody who has listened to certain kinds of music, or read certain kinds of poetry, or heard certain kinds of performances on the concertina, will admit that even suicide has its brighter aspects.
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Advertising: the science of arresting the human intelligence long enough to get money from it.
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Charles Dickens' creation of Mr. Pickwick did more for the elevation of the human race - I say it in all seriousness - than Cardinal Newman's Lead Kindly Light Amid the Encircling Gloom. Newman only cried out for light in the gloom of a sad world. Dickens gave it.
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We think of the noble object for which the professor appears tonight, we may be assured that the Lord will forgive any one who will laugh at the professor.
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The great man... walks across his century and leaves the marks of his feet all over it, ripping out the dates on his goloshes as he passes.
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American politicians do anything for money... English politicians take the money and won't do anything.
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Most people tire of a lecture in ten minutes clever people can do it in five. Sensible people never go to lectures at all. But the people who do go to a lecture and who get tired of it, presently hold it as a sort of grudge against the lecturer personally. In reality his sufferings are worse than theirs.
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