I can't help preferring champagne to ditch water — I doubt if the universe does.

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Letter to William James (24 March 1907); this was misquoted as "I happen to prefer champagne to ditchwater, but there is no reason to suppose that the cosmos does" in "Our Mission Statement" by William F. Buckley, Jr., in National Review (19 November 1955).

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.

I can't help preferring champagne to ditch water — I doubt if the universe does.

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