Last Thing Quotes (3 quotes)
The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put first.
In Pensées (1670), Section 7, No. 29. As translated in Blaise Pascal and W.F. Trotter (trans.), 'Thoughts', No. 19, collected in Charles W. Eliot (ed.), The Harvard Classics (1910), Vol. 48, 14. Also seen translated as, “The last thing one knows when writing a book is what to put first.” From the original French, “La dernière chose qu’on trouve en faisant un ouvrage, est de savoir celle qu’il faut mettre la première,” in Ernest Havet (ed.), Pensées de Pascal (1892), 223.
The last thing one settles in writing a book is what one should put in first.
In Pensées. As translated by W.F. Trotter in Blaise Pascal: Thoughts, Letters, and Minor Works (1910), 14.
You know something I could really do without? The Space Shuttle. … It’s irresponsible. The last thing we should be doing is sending our grotesquely distorted DNA out into space.
Brain Droppings (1998), 128.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
