French thought for the day

philg - August 22, 2003 @ 8:29 pm · Filed under From the Old Server

My hosts here in Omaha, Nebraska have the September 1, 2003 Forbes magazine in their kitchen.  One quote that might amuse you…



There are three roads to ruin:
women, gambling, and technicians.
The most pleasant is with women,
the quickest is with gambling,
but the surest is with technicians.
— Georges Pompidou


(Of course, the French definition of a “technician” is more akin to what we would call a scientist, engineer, or “technologist”.)

5 Comments

  1. Owen Byrne

    August 22, 2003 @ 10:29 pm

    1

    s/ruin/riches/
    works!
    Depending on your perspective

  2. freddie

    August 23, 2003 @ 8:29 am

    2

    Right. Technicians gave us air conditioning.

  3. Chris Lightfoot

    August 23, 2003 @ 4:41 pm

    3

    Also attributed to Baron Rothschild: “There are three principal ways to lose money: wine, women, and engineers. While the first two are more pleasant, the third is by far the more certain.” I can’t find an unimpeachable attribution, though.

  4. Beavis

    August 23, 2003 @ 7:16 pm

    4

    http://www.quotationspage.com/search.php3

    Search for Rothschild.

    Contributed Quotations
    This collection was provided by our users – the quotations you enter into the Contribution Form are reviewed and potentially included here. While this collection is not as accurate in its attributions as the others, it does have a unique mix of subjects and is constantly growing (as of this writing, over 1300 quotations so far.)

  5. Greg Ball

    August 25, 2003 @ 6:54 pm

    5

    Speaking of Forbes magazine… they seem to have ‘forgotten’ about my subscription. They must have discovered that I’m a graduate student.

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