Muhammed Ali: No Vietcong Ever Called Me Nigger Buzzkillers by the score have asked us here at the Institute for shows on the Vietnam War. The Ken Burns film on PBS, The Vietnam War, the 18-part, 10-hour interview-thon, is provoking many of you to ask questions about the war and about the protests against it.…

Chief Seattle, “We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children” Quote or No Quote? It’s probably a sin, Buzzkillers, to think of some historical figures as job security for me and for those who work at the Buzzkill Institute. But an avalanche of words and sentiments are mis-attributed…

Sometimes, Buzzkillers, the stars just seem to align. There’s a meteor shower and a rainbow on the same day. And a whole bunch of writers, pundits, journalists, and aphorists come up with roughly the same idea at roughly the same time. Or at least they come up with it over a couple of decades, and,…

Ah, Buzzkillers, I have so much in common with Abraham Lincoln. Height (well, almost), a refusal to suffer fools (hence the founding of the Buzzkill Institute), we’re both excellent wordsmiths, and we have a healthy man-crush on the 19th century Unitarian theologian Theodore Parker. (More on him later.) I must be getting soft in my…

Upon seeing “The Birth of a Nation,” the ground-breaking, if highly racist, piece of cinematography in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson is often quoted as saying, “It is like writing history with lightning.” Nearly every American Buzzkiller out there has probably heard this in a 20th Century US history class, or a cinematography class, or on…

In the aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation and the fall of France in June 1940, things looked pretty bleak for the Allies, and indeed they were. The Battle of Britain followed almost immediately, and lasted until the end of October 1940, but the British outlast the German bombing raids. The next year, not long after…

I like this week’s “quote,” Buzzkillers, because it’s history is full of all the things we’ve been talking about on this show — phrases and sentiments that “sound” like they were said by a prominent person so “they must be from him,” misplaced (or moved) punctuation marks, and the glorious and rapid assumptions displayed on…

In 1972, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai was asked about the impact of the French Revolution. “Too early to say,” he replied. Given that the French Revolution of 1789 had occurred nearly 200 years before, Zhou Enlai was expressing the long view of history in a very witty and Oscar Wildean way. News of this quote…

Finally a quote that’s actually true! Yes, Teddy Roosevelt did say that the best advice he’d ever heard about dealing with foreign affairs and potentially hostile foreign powers is to, “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Speaking softly and carrying a big stick will mean that, “you will go far.” When he was Governor…

Ah, Buzzkillers, good old Oscar Wilde, the author of so many excellent plays, novels, and poems. Dripping with epigrams, Oscar entertained literary circles in London, Paris and Dublin with his wit, often pairing philosophical and comical themes to excellent effect. Some examples include: It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give…