David Foster Wallace Quotes
I never, even for a moment, doubted what they’d told me. This is why it is that adults and even parents can, unwittingly, be cruel: they cannot imagine doubt’s complete absence. They have forgotten.
Wallace, David Foster. The Pale King. Little, Brown and Company, 2011.
In 2005 terrorists exploded bombs in the Spanish Railroad system. Fingerprints were found on bombs. The FBI found that the prints belonged to Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon attorney who married an Islamic Egyptian woman; he also had a Muslim client. He was arrested and held without bail based on the FBI testimony about the quality of the fingerprint match the quotes from which are above. The Spanish police did not think that there was a match and kept investigating and found the bomber whose fingerprints matched the samples perfectly. Based on this embarrassing fact, Mayfield was released. The quotation shows that there were no accepted forensic science standards. Each fingerprint examiner, sets his own standards for what he will describe as a “perfect match” of 100% reliability. The FBI sworn expert testimony was 100% wrong. Forensic testimony came under suspicion; public opinion changed when people realized that fingerprinting is not the objective reliable identifier that they thought. See linked quotes.
Charles Krouthammer was a fellow political columnist but where shields was a pragmatist of the left, Krouthammer was an ideologue of the right. He was also a very well-read and informed man who spoke with great authority. Sometimes he was right and sometimes, wrong, but he was rarely in doubt.
David Foster Wallace was an American author of novels, short stories and essays, and a university professor of English and creative writing. Wallace is widely known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which Time magazine cited as one of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005. His posthumous novel, The Pale King (2011), was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2012.
