• Buchan's source remains unknown. The witticism was repeated by Harry Emerson Fosdick in his On Being a Real Person (1943), ch. 1, with acknowledgement to Buchan, and was again used by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Look magazine (December 14, 1955). Credit for this line is therefore often wrongly given to Fosdick or to Sheen. Credit has also been given to the conductor Walter Damrosch (1862-1950).
• This is a play on words commonly used in vagrancy statutes to define a vagrant or bum as having "no visible means of support" financially.
I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support." in the context of "John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir, speaking to the Law Society of Upper Canada, (21 February 1936); published in Canadian Occasions (1940), p. 201.
• Buchan's source remains unknown. The witticism was repeated by Harry Emerson Fosdick in his On Being a Real Person (1943), ch. 1, with acknowledgement to Buchan, and was again used by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Look magazine (December 14, 1955). Credit for this line is therefore often wrongly given to Fosdick or to Sheen. Credit has also been given to the conductor Walter Damrosch (1862-1950).
• This is a play on words commonly used in vagrancy statutes to define a vagrant or bum as having "no visible means of support" financially." to mean that wisdom is timeless.
About John Buchan