George Bernard Shaw Quotes
You propound a complicated arithmetical problem: say cubing a number containing four digits. Give me a slate and half an hour's time, and I can produce a wrong answer.
Shaw, George Bernard. Everybody's Political What's What?. Constable and Co., 1944, p. 55.
The United States along with France, Britain and other Western nations maintained an arms embargo against both sides of the Spanish Civil War. However, Italy and Germany, not only shipped arms to the Nationalists but sent planes and crews to fight against the Republicans. Bowers warned that the freely elected Republican government would not be able to hold out against the Fascist attacks of two outside countries and the nationalists in Spain. Further that the arms embargo would force the Republicans politically into the hands of the Russians who became the only possible sourced of arms. The American right wing was opposed to involvement in such foreign disputes. After the Fascists took over Spain, the lesson was not lost on Roosevelt in terms of arms to Great Britain when WWII broke out.
The public and the educators were outraged and no sooner was the school closed, than immigration had people moving to New York created a need for more high school capacity. La Guardia was one of the few politicians who tended to admit his mistakes, go on and fix them and then do some other “good stuff.” Others argue that he was so popular so he could admit to anything and get away with it. This was perhaps true, but one of the reasons for the great popularity was extreme honesty and candor and a minimum of hypocrisy.
There is a great tendency in politics and government operations to get extremely precise numbers because political opponents will always attack all numbers that do not support their positions. The result is that typically, so much time and money goes into trying to get precision, that by the time the numbers are good enough the opportunity to make the right policy decision will have passed. Much information that bears on an issue is never used because it is not precise enough while the precise information is not particularly relevant. See {619763} for a similar related quote.
He was the leader of the team that followed to invading troops into Iraq to find the nuclear and other WMDs that the CIA had said were deployed and ready to be used. They found none. Worse for the CIA, there were not even any development programs ongoing. The CIA Director was furious with Kay for admitting the CIA gross error. Kay was given minor assignments thereafter even though he was the best WMD analyst we had.
George Bernard Shaw, known at his insistence simply as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1912) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
