Samuel Johnson Quotes
When speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four.
Johnson, Samuel. "Review of A Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil." The Literary Magazine, vol. 2, 1757, p. 171.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
This quotation from 1888 is apropos many of the major scientific advances which are counter-intuitive. Relativity was one; another was Quantum Mechanics where we have to learn to accept the fact that something can be in two (or more) places at once or that the exact same forces acting on an object can produce more than one result. Most non-scientists would see these as absurd, but they are basic characteristics of modern physics.
Many politicians have used this quote in recent years, but Moynahan seems to be the first.
Samuel Johnson, often referred to as Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. Religiously, he was a devout Anglican, and politically a committed Tory. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes Johnson as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history". He is the subject of James Boswell's The Life of Samuel Johnson, described by Walter Jackson Bate as "the most famous single work of biographical art in the whole of literature".
