Horace Quotes
The mind attracted by what is false has no relish for better things.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus. The incessant concentration on things that are false exhibited by the kinds of people Horace described has been observed in the political scene of almost all eras. The preoccupation with witches was one of the most famous, and a very recent one was the large number of people who were attracted by the belief that President Barack Obama was a Muslim who was born abroad despite the fact that Obama had been a regular attendant at Christian Protestant Churches for his adult like and had never worshipped in a Mosque. The “birthers” focused on the falsehood that Obama was not born in America despite the facts that there were contemporaneous newspaper announcements of his birth in Hawaii and the State of Hawaii authenticated his Hawaiian birth certificate.
Horace 65 BC-8 BC, Roman Poet, Quoted in James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations, 1899
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
See Ben Franklin for an earlier similar sentiment {465143}.
This sentiment was apparently first expressed by the English Calvinist Minister, Charles Spurgeon, 1834-1892.
See {115604} for a similar sentiment from England.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, known in the English-speaking world as Horace (/ˈhɒrɪs/), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his Odes as just about the only Latin lyrics worth reading: "He can be lofty sometimes, yet he is also full of charm and grace, versatile in his figures, and felicitously daring in his choice of words."
