Nathan Natas, genius post as usual! I like the "Not without good reason" bit too, that's very familiar to me - it underlines the authority of a vague quote!
Someone or other said this about something, and so because it agrees with what we think about the same subject then of course it must be true. If you don't agree with it, don't complain to us because we didn't say it in the first place, we just agree with it, for the time being. If it's discovered that it's wrong then we can work round it by "finding" another quote that says a similar thing, if not we can always pull the "new light" trick.
It's like saying "...allegedly" after making an outrageous comment about somebody, it covers their butts legally I guess!