“All this is the result of your imprudence and stupidity.”
A letter from Pope Gregory II to Emperor Leo III in 727 AD excerpted in Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church & State 1050-1300 [also from my “Don’t mince words, Bones” file]
“Compaq FAQ: Where do I find the ‘Any’ key on my keyboard? (FAQ2859) The term ‘any key’ does not refer to a particular key on the keyboard. It simply means to strike any one of the keys on your keyboard or handheld screen.”
http://web14.compaq.com/falco/detail.asp?FAQnum=FAQ2859 as of Jan. 6, 2002, forwarded by a suitably appalled friend
“I’m not sure I believe all this stuff about genetically modified food being bad for you. I just had a really tasty leg of salmon and I feel fine…”
Emailed by a friend October 31, 2024, as a graphic and without attribution
“REMEMBER/ PERFORM HAND HYGIENE”
Sign I encountered just outside “DAY SURGERY WAITING ROOM” in Ottawa Hospital Riverside at 6:30 AM on a January 2025 morning, then a graphic of someone’s hands getting either soap or sanitizer to clarify this atrocious jargon [to be fair followed by the French plain-language “RAPPEL/ LAVEZ VOUS SOUVENT LES MAINS”]
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof was to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
Douglas Adams, emailed by a friend and attributed to “Mostly Harmless, 1992”
“delivered with the quiet dignity of a wet T-shirt competition.”
Eli Lake in The Free Press November 3, 2024 [with specific reference to Donald Trump’s political flimflam that does not so much lie on purpose as deny the very possibility of truth]
“For, ex hypothesi, he is as insensible to all rational argument as a horny-hided Siegfried, dipped in the flood of incapacity, and unable to think or judge.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, “The Art of Controversy,” in Jack E. Conner & Marcelline Krafchick Speaking of Rhetoric [condescendingly, the reference is to an ordinary man as an opponent in argument but I treasure the phrase “dipped in the flood of incapacity”]
Because of the infamous crowded, dirty, rowdy streets of Rome, and tendency of cheap shoddy apartment “insulae” buildings to collapse, and people throwing solid or liquid objects out upper-storey windows “All in all, he [Juvenal] thought, only a fool would go out to dinner without making his will.”
Will Durant Caesar and Christ