On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 07:18:17PM +0000, Russel Winder wrote: > On Tue, 2014-03-04 at 10:27 -0800, H. S. Teoh wrote: > > On Tue, Mar 04, 2014 at 06:19:38PM +0000, Chris wrote: [...] > > > Btw, the quote you have in this post: > > > > > > Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by > > > incompetence. -- Napoleon Bonaparte > > > > > > I'm surprised that Napoleon would say something like this. Malice > > > is often a characteristic of the incompetent. The only way to get > > > the better of their betters. :-) > > > > I'm not sure if that attribution is accurate. Nick has pointed out > > to me that he knows the same quote attributed to someone else, so > > this may be a case of internet misattribution (I picked up that > > quote from somewhere online, way back when -- no idea if the source > > was reliable, y'know, being the internet and everything). > > I present you the following, which between then give a good account of > the whole situation. Sort of. Possibly. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon's_razor > https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Hanlon_s_razor.html > http://blog.writch.com/2009/04/hanlons-razor-which-i-knew-as-heinleins-razor.html [...]
Whoa. So this is one of those things that nobody knows for sure where it came from? :) My new favorite version of it is (allegedly) Elbert Hubbard's: Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped. That's going into my quotes file... :) T -- People say I'm indecisive, but I'm not sure about that. -- YHL, CONLANG