imageSince Colin Berry found it necessary to question the accuracy of a quotation by someone else by actually saying . . .

Goodnight David Goulet. I suggest you go away and do your homework – thoroughly, before pitting me against your second hand literary wisdom.

. . . I will take the opportunity to question a quotation Colin has used a couple of times. I wasn’t going to say anything. I do like the quote. I do hope William F. Buckley actually used these words; for I want to use them and attribute them to him. I won’t go so far, however, as to say Buckley didn’t say:

In short form:

  • “The purpose of an open mind is to close it . . .”

In long form:

  • “The purpose of an open mind is to close it, on particular subjects. If you never do — you’ve simply abdicated the responsibility to think.”

He must of said it, right? But Wikiquote, a Wikipedia affiliated project and the online bible of such things, is in the process of purging the quote for lack of a definitive source. But there is hope. Colin do you have a reference? I’ll even update Wikiquote or let you have the honor.

Is it perhaps an internet inspired adaption of the this quote by the Catholic apologist, G. K. Chesterton who wrote:

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.

— Autobiography. Collected Works Vol. 16, p. 212

Perhaps Buckley “borrowed” the words and swizzled them and the meaning. I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong and that along with David I merely suffer from “second hand literary wisdom.”

Anyway, Colin, there was a better way to offer a correction to someone. I don’t want things spinning out of control again.