SBcardinal:
I just heard this quote and loved it. Jumped online to see where Swift said it… and AARGH another case of people randomly using quotation marks and attributions. Thank you all for trying to clear the confusion. I found two quotes on Google books from “Dean Swift” in 1852. "Dean Swift said, with the utmost truth, that “it is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing which he was never reasoned into.” " Would “Dean” be in the scholarly sense, and someone at the time would have assumed Jonathan? Or Sydney? I am forcing myself to step away from the computer and not search anymore tonight.
Johnathan Swift was Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, apparently from about 1714 until his death in 1745, and was in earlier days referred to as “Dean Swift” in consequence.