Every few days, at work, I try to find a new quote to hang in my cubicle – usually something cynical, but always (hopefully) worthy of discussion. Today, the quote I picked reads: “Do not condemn the judgement of another becuase it differs from your own. You may both be wrong.” This quote is attributed to “Dandemis,” but when I do a web search for him, the only thing I can find is that quote attribution.
Anyone ever heard of him?
Possibly a philosopher from India. 3rd century?
Can’t be certain…Google helpeth little.
From what I can tell from my searchers Dandemis is another name for Lao Tze, a contemporary of Confusious and a founder of Taoism. Tài Shǐ Dàn, who was the Prefect of the Grand Scribes during the same time period, was his actual name, according to theory at least. I can’t seem to find where the name ‘Dandemis’ actually comes from (I assume it has some connection to Tài Shǐ Dàn) but several sites that list that quote point to it being a psuedonym of Lao Tze.
I am lookoing for some citable conformation of this but its the best I’ve found so far.
Unfortunately after an afternoon of looking through Philosophy and Asian History journals I can find no reference to Dandemis being an alias of Lao Tze (or Laozi, Lao Tzi, or Lao Kiun), let alone any reference to a Dandemis at all. So I am going to have to stick with the Lao Tze theory for lack of a better idea.
For one day next week, consider…
The beatings will continue until morale improves.
I heard Lou Dobbs utter it (or something close) in an ironic tone, a day or two ago, but with no attribution.
It may be trite, for all I know.
This seems to come from a paradoy-motivational website, www.despair.com
Not sure who copied who, though.
But … but … I thought the internet was the repository of all human knowledge!
Anyway, who knows – maybe there never was a Dandemis; someone came up with a clever quote and needed a fancy-sounding attribution …
The question has been looked into before It apparently goes back at least as far as 1990.
Interestingly, made up or falsely attributed quotes are almost a cottage industry in certain types of email spam, and often derive from self created sigs that people want to give little “polish” to with a historical attribution.
I can find two other quotes attributed to “Dandemis,” both in newspapers from 1938-1939. So his name was known as far back as that, at least in the US.
I’m coming up empty beyond that.
It seems to me that the second post probably points to the best answer, a misspelling of the ancient Indian holy man/hermit Dandamis, who apparantly interacted with Alexander the Great. Page 5 of this PDF File gives a little information about him; and while I can find no evidence of the quote being attributed to Dandamis, it still seems to me that he is the most likely candidate for the attribution.
And this site gives his dates, says he was an American writer and lawyer, but provides no other information. The quote does look like something that one of the American part-time philosophers of the time would have produced, but I can’t understand why I can’t find anything to back this up. I’ll keep looking.
I can find an 1858 US newspaper/journal cite of the spelling “Dandamis.” Thanks for the tip.
And I"m sure you and others are correct about the identity of the philosopher.
Samclem, is there a particular database you’re using for your historical newspaper search? I’d tried running variations of the name through Proquest to check the historical Wall Street Journal and the NY Times, but came up empty. Where I’m at in Colorado we also have a historical newspaper digitization project going on, and I searched that and came up empty too. I’m always interested in discovering new historical newspaper databases, particularly pertaining to the 19th century.
I searched my ProQuest database that I have access to through SABR.
The name was cited in The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature (1844-1898). New York: Dec 1858. Vol. 45, Iss. 4; p. 490 (11 pages).
Normaly I only get access to about six major newspapers using SABR. My guess is that this one comes from “American Periodical Series Online.” Many Universities have this access.