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The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

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‘Windsor Forest’ (1711) l. 11<br />

Party-spirit, which at best is but the madness <strong>of</strong> many for the gain <strong>of</strong> a few.<br />

Letter to Edward Blount, 27 August 1714, in George Sherburn (ed.) ‘<strong>The</strong> Correspondence <strong>of</strong> Alexander<br />

Pope’ (1956) vol. 1, p. 247<br />

How <strong>of</strong>ten are we to die before we go quite <strong>of</strong>f this stage? In every friend we lose a part <strong>of</strong><br />

ourselves, and the best part.<br />

Letter to Jonathan Swift, 5 December 1732, in George Sherburn (ed.) ‘<strong>The</strong> Correspondence <strong>of</strong> Alexander<br />

Pope’ (1956) vol. 3, p. 335<br />

To endeavour to work upon the vulgar with fine sense, is like attempting to hew blocks with a<br />

razor.<br />

‘Miscellanies’ (1727) vol. 2 ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’<br />

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other<br />

words, that he is wiser to-day than he was yesterday.<br />

‘Miscellanies’ (1727) vol. 2 ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’<br />

It is with narrow-souled people as with narrow-necked bottles: the less they have in them, the<br />

more noise they make in pouring it out.<br />

‘Miscellanies’ (1727) vol. 2 ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’<br />

When men grow virtuous in their old age, they only make a sacrifice to God <strong>of</strong> the devil’s<br />

leavings.<br />

‘Miscellanies’ (1727) vol. 2 ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’<br />

<strong>The</strong> most positive men are the most credulous.<br />

‘Miscellanies’ (1727) vol. 2 ‘Thoughts on Various Subjects’<br />

All gardening is landscape-painting.<br />

1734, in Joseph Spence ‘Anecdotes’ (ed. J. Osborn, 1966) no. 606<br />

Here am I, dying <strong>of</strong> a hundred good symptoms.<br />

To George, Lord Lyttelton, 15 May 1744, in Joseph Spence ‘Anecdotes’ (ed. J. Osborn, 1966) no. 637<br />

4.79 Sir Karl Popper 1902—<br />

Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical<br />

attempts to refute it.<br />

‘Conjectures and Refutations’ (1963)<br />

I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable <strong>of</strong> being tested by<br />

experience. <strong>The</strong>se considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability <strong>of</strong> a system<br />

is to be taken as a criterion <strong>of</strong> demarcation...It must be possible for an empirical scientific system<br />

to be refuted by experience.<br />

‘<strong>The</strong> Logic <strong>of</strong> Scientific Discovery’ (1934) ch. 1, sect. 6<br />

We may become the makers <strong>of</strong> our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.<br />

‘<strong>The</strong> Open Society and its Enemies’ (1945) introduction<br />

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only<br />

freedom can make security secure.

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