“Half the world…”

FAMOUS AUSTEN QUOTE: “One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”         Jane Austen (1775-1817)        British novelist        Emma (1815)

HOWE’S COUNTERQUOTE: “Half the world does not know how the other half lives, but is trying to find out.”        E.W. Howe (1853-1937)        American journalist and novelist        Quoted in The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations

MR. MOTO’S VERSION: “Half the world spends its time laughing at the other half, and both are fools.”        Actor Peter Lorre as Mr. Moto        In the 1937 film Think Fast, Mr. Moto

JEFFERSON’S VARIATION: “Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites.”        Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)         Third President of the United States of America        Notes on the State of Virginia (1787)

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