AMBITIOUSLY subtitled The 1,000 Wisest Things Ever Said, this collection of quotations excludes anything from Jesus Christ or Shakespeare.
They came too early to win the Nobel Prize, the condition for inclusion.
The hundreds who have won since the prize was instituted in 1901 often contradict each other. Milton Friedman: “You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.’’ George Bernard Shaw: “The more I see of the moneyed classes the more I understand the guillotine.” Albert Camus: “A sword is needed to conquer a sword.”
Ralph Bunche (Peace 1950): “The world has had ample evidence that war begets only the conditions that beget further war.”
But there’s much food for thought, served up under well-indexed subjects by prizewinners who include Albert Schweitzer, Martin Luther King, Rudyard Kipling and Winston Churchill. However, there’s a dearth of humour. Shame that Groucho Marx and Mae West never won the Nobel Prize.
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