>The only "Johnson" I know about are Lyndon B. and some furniture cleaning stuff/auto wax company. US specific common knowledge ?
>
Sorry. Dr. Samuel Johnson was one of the great English writers of the 18th century. Essays, works on Shakespeare and a Dictionary as well as being known for being extremely quotable. This was helped by James Boswell who was his secretary and friend and who wrote a biography, The Life of Johnson, that is in itself a literary classic.
( Lyndon Johnson was pretty quotable too, but most of his best stuff couldn't get past the bad language filters here on UT :-)
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
