BobDobolina said:
Well there is this one favourite I have from a few years back whin this PC-ite, feminist woman I met at a party who acted in a bit too cocky manner than was appropriate.
For most of the time I don't despise cocky behaviour as long as you've got the skills and the knowledge to back it up. But she didn't and she acted very "superior" to others and she didn't shy away from credit her superior status to her fine education along with her supposedly superior political conviction.
But then came the unfortunate moment where she tried to make a point by credit Voltaire (she seemed to like Voltaire) with the quote: "I dislike what you're saying, but I would defend your right to say it to the death."
Where I told her: "No dear, that was Evelyn Beatrice Hall who wrote it in her biography about Voltaire. There is no evidence to suggest that Voltaire actually said it himself."
Whereupon she told me I was wrong and that her teacher had told her class that it was a quote from Voltaire, but I countered with a very honest: "Yeah, my teacher told me that too... In grade school. But I actually bother to check the sources myself rather than simply taking a teachers word for it. We can confirm it online if you'd like?"
But by then she got nervous and tried to steer the conversation away from the subject. I just smiled.
Of course, it is an easy mistake to make, since a lot of teachers in schools around the world teach their students that it was a Voltaire-quote (I'll give her that much), but since she had actually claimed that she majored in the relevant subjects during her university studies, I kind of felt that she should have known the real source to such a "historical" quote, and apparently so did a few others at the party.
Do mote that this is a well chosen anecdote on my part, due to the fact that I have acted a lot less gracious at other times when I was under the influence of alcohol... I tend to get extra mean spirited when dealing with university snobs under those conditions and more often than not, I really "twist the knife in the wound"... But in hindsight, I kind of feel like I went a bit overboard during those times so I do not consider those moments the most shining ones, as im sure you can understand. :S