"At least Hanlon's razor... has something witty and memorable and real-life-applicable about it..."

Writes Rex Parker about today's NYT crossword, where the 18-across clue is "'Never attribute to ___ that which is adequately explained by stupidity' (Hanlon's razor)."

The answer to on that clue is... spoiler alert...

MALICE.

Rex continues, going on about "fill-in-the-blank quotation clues":

... the Vidal quote, much as I (believe me) appreciate the sentiment (4D: "___ is knowing who you are, what you want to say and not giving a damn": Gore Vidal), has no clear relationship to STYLE and is not memorable in the slightest (sidenote: the lack of a serial comma in this rendering of the quotation is painful). I had the Vidal quote down to ST-LE and ... well, it's early (before 4am when I started), I should've known that when none of the regular vowels worked, insert Y, but for a few seconds I was, as the crosswords say, at sea. My point is, please, one fill-in-the-blank quotation clue per puzzle, max. Preferably none. It's a bad clue type. Nobody likes them (no you don't, please stop).

Nobody? Wait a minute! I like them! Even though the Gore Vidal quote was the last — or second-to-last — thing I got in the puzzle, I really enjoyed the take-away insight into writing style. I'm going to use that. I'm using it now!

And I like that Hanlon's razor, even though I disagree with the "never." I recognize that the "never" makes it jaunty and the "adequately" is an adequate loophole.

Here's the Wikipedia page for Hanlon's razor. Excerpt:

Some of the oldest attributions of the idea date to the 18th century. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote in the first entry of his influential epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774, first English translation 1779): "[...] Mißverständnisse und Trägheit machen vielleicht mehr Irrungen in der Welt als List und Bosheit. Wenigstens sind die beiden letzteren gewiß seltener." ("misunderstandings and lethargy perhaps produce more wrong in the world than deceit and malice do. At any rate, the latter two are certainly rarer.") Another variation appears in The Wheels of Chance (1896) by H.G. Wells:

There is very little deliberate wickedness in the world. The stupidity of our selfishness gives much the same results indeed, but in the ethical laboratory it shows a different nature.

... Andrew Roberts, in his biography of Winston Churchill, quotes from Churchill's correspondence with King George VI in February 1943 regarding disagreements with Charles De Gaulle: "'His 'insolence ... may be founded on stupidity rather than malice.'"...

I see that Hanlon's razor is related to the principle of charity. That's a long-term interest of mine.

As for Gore Vidal, here are 26 of what The Guardian called his best quotes. I'll cherry-pick from the pre-picked cherries:

"It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail."

"A narcissist is someone better looking than you are."

"Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be." 

"Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself." 

"There is no such thing as a homosexual or a heterosexual person. There are only homo- or heterosexual acts. Most people are a mixture of impulses if not practices."

"There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise."

There's one more that I want to highlight, but it's so apt for 2024 presidential purposes that I've got to make it into a separate post.