One of my summer projects is to set up a page of spurious quotations attributed to Classics types, in the hopes that there will be at least one site on the Internet which will prevent these things from being repeated ad nauseam ... e.g., from the Westborough News:
The sad thing about these quotes -- from a Classicist point of view -- is that Classicists are constantly confronted with these things and the seeds of self-doubt get sown when they don't recognize it. Very often, questions arise on the Classics list on where this or that can be found and far too often (likely because of that 'you can't prove a negative mindset'), the question goes unanswered -- which suggests to me the quote must needs be spurious. In the case of the above quotation, we've had a couple of rounds of it on the Classics list and it appears to be a version (in spirit) of something said by William Butler.
Ed Behn Sr. hopes that his son's enlistment might encourage others who have enjoyed the benefits of this country's higher education system to consider serving their country by joining the military. He sums up these feelings with a quote from the Greek historian Thucydides, who once wrote: "The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools."
The sad thing about these quotes -- from a Classicist point of view -- is that Classicists are constantly confronted with these things and the seeds of self-doubt get sown when they don't recognize it. Very often, questions arise on the Classics list on where this or that can be found and far too often (likely because of that 'you can't prove a negative mindset'), the question goes unanswered -- which suggests to me the quote must needs be spurious. In the case of the above quotation, we've had a couple of rounds of it on the Classics list and it appears to be a version (in spirit) of something said by William Butler.