Compliments In 1713, Jonathan Swift declared in a famous line of poetry, “’Tis an old maxim in the schools / That flattery’s the food of fools.” But he failed to tell us how eager people are to swallow those empty calories. For instance, with a remark as instructive as it is humorous, the comedic actor McLean Stevenson once described how his wife “tricked” him into marriage: “She said she liked me.”
