[Ads-l] Quote: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it (was Re: Another that's new to me:)

[Wilson Gray]

Thanks, Garson!

BTW, I had no idea that _Joad_ was an actual surname and not just a
joke-name that Steinbeck had made up specifically as a semi-insulting term
for poor white people. I had the same impression of Al Capp's _Yokum_.

Youneverknow.

On Fri, Nov 24, 2017 at 11:26 PM, ADSGarson O'Toole <
adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wilson Gray wrote:
> > “It can be very hard to understand something, when
> > misunderstanding it is essential to your paycheck.”
> >
> > But, only a single Google hit, this time.
>
> Upton Sinclair made a similar remark when he was campaigning to become
> Governor of California. I've been intending to write an entry for this
> quotation for years. Fred has a 1949 citation in "The Yale Books of
> Quotations" and Barry has a 1935 citation in a book by Sinclair. (Last
> week I examined "Procrastination is the assassin of opportunity".)
>
> [ref] 1934 December 11, San Francisco Chronicle, I, Candidate for
> Governor and How I Got Licked by Upton Sinclair, Quote Page 16, Column
> 9, San Francisco, California. (GenealogyBank)[/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> I used to say to our audiences: "It is difficult to get a man to
> understand something, when his salary depends upon his not
> understanding it!"
> [End excerpt]
>
> Here is a thematically similar passage from C. E. M. Joad in 1922.
>
> [ref] 1922, Common-Sense Theology by C. E. M. Joad, Chapter 3: The
> Life Force in Education, Quote Page 131 and 132, T. Fisher Unwin,
> London. (HahtiTrust Full View) link [/ref]
>
> [Begin excerpt]
> Mr. Banks. Hear, hear! It's all a question of trusts and monopolies.
> Doctors have a monopoly of medicine just as parsons have of God. You
> can't get a parson to admit the arguments of an agnostic, because his
> salary depends on his not letting the agnostic refute him; and you
> can't get an ordinary doctor to look kindly on psychoanalysis or
> autosuggestion because their success would make him superfluous. All
> this is not a question of the Life Force at all; it is a question of
> bread and butter.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org