quacks QUOTES

1 " It is the natural tendency of the ignorant to believe what is not true. In order to overcome that tendency it is not sufficient to exhibit the true; it is also necessary to expose and denounce the false. To admit that the false has any standing in court, that it ought to be handled gently because millions of morons cherish it and thousands of quacks make their livings propagating it—to admit this, as the more fatuous of the reconcilers of science and religion inevitably do, is to abandon a just cause to its enemies, cravenly and without excuse. "

― ,

2 " Gundar seemed to come to a decision. " Well, as my old mam used to say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck." " Very wise," Halt said. " And what exactly do your mother's words of wisdom have to do with this situation?" Gundar shrugged. " It looks like a channel. It's the right place for a channel. If I were digging one, this is where I'd dig a channel. So. . ." " So it's probably the channel?" Selethen said. Gundar grinned at him. " Either that or it's a duck. "

3 " While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,
The fate of empires and the fall of kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention. "

― Robert Burns , Complete Works of Robert Burns

4 " The social function of economic science consists precisely in developing sound
economic theories and in exploding the fallacies of vicious reasoning. In the pursuit of
this task the economist incurs the deadly enmity of all mountebanks and charlatans
whose shortcuts to an earthly paradise he debunks. The less these quacks are able to
advance plausible objections to an economist’s argument, the more furiously do they
insult them. "

― Ludwig von Mises , Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays

5 " Really great moral teachers never do introduce new moralities: it is quacks and cranks who do that.... The real job of every moral teacher is to keep on bringing us back, time after time, to the old simple principles which we are all so anxious not to see; like bringing a horse back and back to the fence it has refused to jump or bringing a child back and back to the bit in its lesson that it wants to shirk. "

― C.S. Lewis , Mere Christianity

6 " The social organs are constituted so as to enable them to develop harmoniously in the grand air of liberty. Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, and their chains, and their hooks, and their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social laboratories, their governmental whims, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their State religions, their inflationary or monopolizing banks, their limitations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And now, after having vainly inflicted upon the social body so many systems, let them end where they ought to have begun — reject all systems, and try of liberty — liberty, which is an act of faith in God and in His work "

― Frédéric Bastiat

7 " If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, you're probably in the wrong bathroom. "

8 " Luck ever attends the bold and constructive thinker: the apple, for instance, fell from the tree precisely when Newton's mind was groping after the law of gravity, and as Diva stepped into her grocer's to begin her morning's shopping (for she had been occupied with roses ever since breakfast) the attendant was at the telephone at the back of the shop. He spoke in a lucid telephone-voice." We've only two of the big tins of corned beef," he said; and there was a pause, during which, to a psychic, Diva's ears might have seemed to grow as pointed with attention as a satyr's. But she could only hear little hollow quacks from the other end." Tongue as well. Very good. I'll send them up at once," he added, and came forward into the shop." Good morning," said Diva. Her voice was tremulous with anxiety and investigation. " Got any big tins of corned beef? The ones that contain six pounds." " Very sorry, ma'am. We've only got two, and they've just been ordered." " A small pot of ginger then, please," said Diva recklessly. " Will you send it round immediately?" " Yes, ma'am. The boy's just going out." That was luck. Diva hurried into the street, and was absorbed by the headlines of the news outside the stationer's. This was a favourite place for observation, for you appeared to be quite taken up by the topics of the day, and kept an oblique eye on the true object of your scrutiny... "

9 " That everything in nature has “the appearance” of design is not exactly evidence against design. According to Dawkins, though, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is almost certainly something else. "

10 " When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. "

― James Whitcomb Riley

11 " If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands. "

― Douglas Adams