It often happens that a man of considerable eminence in his own profession, but without the smallest acquaintance with the fundamentals of economics, will make a suggestion which is precisely on a level with the proposition that the locomotive would be much more efficient if itsweight weretakenoffthe driving wheelsso that they could revolve more easily. The editor of an important magazineacceptswithjoy the contributionin whichhedevelopshisideas, and thepublic feebly thinks that there may be something in it, and is confirmed in this view by the fact that professional economists are as disinclined to publisha refutationof it asthe Astronomer Royal is to answer the theorists who declare that the world is flat.

-Cannan, Edwin
  Wealth, ch.6.

Very flat, Norfolk.

-Coward, Sir Noe«  l Peirce
  Private Lives, act1.

Sincerity is all that counts is a widespread modern heresy. Think again. Bolsheviks are sincere. Fascists are sincere.Lunaticsaresincere.Peoplewho believethatthe earth is flat are sincere. They can't all be right. Better Sir Martin Mar-All make certain first that you have something to be sincere about, and with.

-Bradwell
  In the Daily Express.

Shakespeare†was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All images of Nature were still present to him, and he drew them, not laboriously, but luckily; when he describes anything, you more than see it, you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read Nature; he looked inwards, and found her there† He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great.

-Dryden,John
  An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,'Shakespeare and Ben  Jonson Compared'.

I can teach it round or flat.

-Johnson, Lyndon B(aines) also called LBJ
When asked by a school board about the shape of the earth. Quoted in Tom Wicker One of Us (1991).

She couldn't possibly go back to the gentleman's flat; she had no right to cry in strangers' houses.

-Beauchamp
  The Garden Party and Other Stories,'The Life of Ma Parker'.

All fictional characters are flat.

-Waugh, Evelyn Arthur StJohn
  'TheArt of Fiction XXX: EvelynWaugh', in The Paris Review, no.8, Summer/Fall.