The Case of the Perjured Parrot Quotes

“You might be interested in his economic philosophy, Mr. Mason. He believed men attached too much importance to money as such. He believed a dollar represented a token of work performed, that men were given these tokens to hold until they needed the product of work performed by some other man, that anyone who tried to get a token without giving his best work in return was an economic counterfeiter. He felt that most of our depression troubles had been caused by a universal desire to get as many tokens as possible in return for as little work as possibly - that too many men were trying to get lost of tokens without doing any work. He said men should cease to think in terms of tokens and think, instead, only in terms of work performed as conscientiously as possible.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“Take politics, for instance. We can look back at past events, and the deadly significance of those events seems so plain that we don’t see how people could possibly have overlooked them. Yet millions of voters, at the time, saw those facts and warped their significance”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“Events are like telephone poles, streaming back past the observation platform of a speeding train.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“Take politics, for instance. We can look back at past events, and the deadly significance of those events seems so plain that we don’t see how people could possibly have overlooked them. Yet millions of voters, at the time, saw those facts and warped their significance so that they supported erroneous political beliefs.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“Once a man forms an opinion, he starts interpreting facts in the light of that belief. He ceases to be an impartial judge of facts.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“hit her where she least expects to be hit. There’s only one way to fight, and that’s to win. Never attack where the other man is expecting it, when the other man is expecting it. That’s where he’s prepared his strongest defense.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“I’m a librarian,” she said, “employed in the San Molinas library. For various reasons, I have never married. My position gives me at once an opportunity to cultivate a taste for the best in literature, and to learn something of character. I have nothing in common with the younger set who find alcoholic stimulation the necessary prerequisite to any attempt at conversation or enjoyment.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“He looks on an education only as a magic formula, which should enable him to go through life without work.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“My mother was a wonderful woman. She had a loyalty which was unsurpassed, and a complete lack of nervousness. During all her married life, there was literally never an unkind word spoken, simply because she never allowed herself to develop any of those emotional reflexes, which so frequently make people want to bicker with those whom they love, or with whom they come in constant association.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“the money was to go only to those who had been incapacitated in life’s battles: the crippled, the aged, the infirm. To those who could still struggle on, Sabin offered nothing. The privilege of struggling for achievement was the privilege of living, and to take away that right to struggle was equivalent to taking away life itself.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“he did not believe in philanthropy, thinking that the ultimate purpose of life was to develop character; that the more a person came to depend on outside assistance, the more his character was weakened.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot

“things which seem frightfully important at the time have a habit of fading into insignificance. Events are like telephone poles, streaming back past the observation platform of a speeding train. They loom large at first, then melt into the distance, becoming so tiny they finally disappear altogether…. That’s the way with nearly all of the things we think are so vital.”
― Erle Stanley Gardner, The Case of the Perjured Parrot