Dashiell Hammett Quotes
It's sometimes better to pretend I don't hear the sound of somebody in the nearby woods with a shotgun.
Hammett, Dashiell. Selected Letters of Dashiell Hammett: 1921-1960. Edited by Richard Layman and Julie M. Rivett, Counterpoint, 2001.
This is one of the rare proverbs dealing with the importance of intelligence and foreknowledge.
In the closest call to murder in the Senate, Stuart Foote of Mississippi drew a pistol and aimed it at Benton in the heat of a debate:. Foote reconsidered and was overpowered on the Senate floor and was disarmed. There was no disciplinary action taken however. During slavery debates guns in the Congress were so common that Vice President Martin Van Buren once presided over the Senate for two weeks with a loaded pistol in each pocket.
John Nance Garner was a U. S. Congressman from Texas who never made speeches or campaigned in his district, rarely spoke in the House, and would not permit his remarks to be printed in the Congressional Record. Speaker Cannon once said to him:. John Nance Garner was later Vice President of the United States during Franklin Roosevelt's first two terms.
Holmes was a young soldier at the battle. This quote is also sometimes attributed to General Horatio Wright, who was present at the battle and actually got the President down to safety, but we regard it as unlikely that a sophisticated, mature general would have addressed the President so rudely
A very passionate minority of India’s Muslims demanded a separate Islamic State (that would become Pakistan) but Hindu’s and Muslims were mixed throughout India and many Indians and British were concerned that there would be a bloodbath if the plans for independence went forward. When the decision had been made to partition India, Radcliffe had the unenviable task of deciding where the boundary was to be between Pakistan and India. No one on either side was satisfied with his effort. So, realizing that violence was about to break out, he packed quickly and went back to England. Over two million Indians were killed in the violence that broke out in the next weeks as there was a huge migration and ethnic cleansing to implement Radcliffe’s boundaries. Fifty years later, both India and Pakistan acknowledge that Radcliffe did a very reasonable job.
Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories. He was also a screenwriter and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse) and the comic strip character Secret Agent X-9.
