Bringing Others' Words to Bear

Quotations are pervasive in conversations, books, and speeches — especially in speeches — but I rarely hear or read any commentary on them.  They're a little like air: they're all around us, and we just take them as they are without giving them any thought.  Actually, come to think of it, quotations, at least the spoken ones, literally are air because they are made up of words formed from air that comes from our lungs and flows through our mouths.

Anyway, in this column, I take a look at quotations and offer some thoughts on why we use them and how we could use them.

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Here is one of the versions of the "quotations board" I posted outside my dorm room in college. Somehow it has survived for nearly 40 years — and some of the thoughts expressed here have traveled around in my head for just as long.

Listen to the audio version

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.  Then quit.  There's no use being a d--- fool about it."

I remember this quotation, attributed to W. C. Fields, from my only encounter with it more than 40 years ago.  Like several other lines attributed to Fields, it's comical.  (Another witty one: "I always keep a supply of stimulant on hand in case I see a snake — which I also keep handy.")

The line from Fields on failure is funny, but it also carries some truth — or does it?

Yes, I Loved Words Even Back Then

I have a soft spot for quotations.  The ones from Fields appear in a little paperback called Peter's Quotations, a gift from my parents back in my teenage years.  (For the record, I also biked, played baseball, and listened to a lot of classic rock, so you can just keep all those egghead jokes to yourselves.)

Looking back, I am taken by how much of the wisdom I carry around in my head came from this book. It contains thousands of quotations, and I used to consume them like peanut M&M's (another favorite), taking in one after another. I don't remember the vast majority, but some have stuck with me for decades.

How is it that so many lines have remained with me so long and, more importantly, have had a sizable impact on how I see the world?

The short answer to the first part of that question is that I have a longstanding love affair with words and ideas, so quotations naturally appeal to me. In fact, when I was a resident assistant at Read Residence Hall at Indiana University, I used to type up my favorites on my electric typewriter (another gift from my parents, who, as you can see, knew me well) and display them—one per day — on the bulletin board outside my dorm room. (Boy, I'm really racking up the nerd points in this column.) The best part is that my residents — some of them anyway — actually read them. It was an academic floor, but still . . .

The quotations come from other sources, as well. If you look carefully at the photo of my “Words” board—boy, I’m glad I saved this little piece of my adolescence—you will see several literary quotations from Shakespeare and Sam Shepard, playwrights whose work I studied as an English major at Indiana University. I probably pulled some or all of these lines from my studies. (I also quoted my favorite literary humorist, James Thurber, but I realize now, as my mature self, that the line I quoted was in poor taste. I think Thurber himself, if he were alive today, would regret writing it. It’s the kind of thing that might have seemed like a clever throwaway line back then, but any endorsement of domestic violence is, in my mind, unacceptable.)

I mentioned that I played baseball. The most quotable of all baseball players, Yogi Berra, also made an appearance on my "Words" board:

You've got to be very careful if you don't know where you are going, because you might not get there.

I could go on, but suffice to say that my love for words and ideas led me to revel in quotations and to share them with others, but what about the impact of reading all these quotations?

"I am" . . . going to quote a sage.

While I'm dishing out quotations, I should share this one:

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say “I think,” “I am,” but quotes some saint or sage.

Yes, I did actually just quote someone disparaging the act of quoting someone, but bear with me.

This line comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay "Self-Reliance," which I discussed in a column from a few weeks ago. In line with his argument for trusting one's own genius, Emerson questions the impulse to quote another person instead of speaking one's own mind.

As Emerson surely knew, however, quoting another person is a way of speaking one's own mind — indirectly, anyway.  Think back to the last time you quoted someone.  I'm guessing you shared this person's perspective and were using it to express yourself.  If you did disagree with the message of the quotation, you probably used it as a foil for your own perspective.  In either case, you were speaking your mind.

The more interesting — and indeed challenging — question is whether quotations ever shape our own thinking and whether they should.

Believe Them . . . Or Not

The vast majority of memorable quotations are merely ideas captured in words. They typically come with no evidence substantiating their validity. Take the one at the top of this column. Fields provides no research study backing up his claim that we should quit after some number of tries. All he really does, in fact, is contradict a more famous quotation, but he does so in a funny way. Why should we believe his quotation any more than we believe the more famous line that inspired it?

Here's where things get interesting.

If you had to choose one of these two takes on striving, which one would you endorse? (I know, I know, you are practicing dividing your mind and seeing with two faces, as I recommended in a previous column about Poe and Janus, but humor me here.)

When we encounter a quotation such as this one, we might simply agree with it because it captures something we already believed. We might even quote it when writing or speaking about striving, as I mentioned above, but why not simply use our own words, as Emerson urges us to do?

For one thing, we might like the way Fields or another person expressed the idea — with humor or flair, probably. After all, few of us are as funny as Fields or as eloquent as Emerson. Seasoning your perspective with their words can help you engage or even persuade your audience.

There's another reason, though, I think. When your idea feels like, well, just your idea, you may not have much confidence in it. Maybe you're wrong. Specifically, maybe you are biased or misinformed and your take on this particular topic is a great big swing and miss.

When you learn that someone else has said something similar, it's different, especially when that person is an expert, a genius, or someone with relevant personal experience. (As I wrote in the earlier column, Emerson would argue that just one person's perspective, regardless of his or her status, is worthy of consideration, but not everyone shares his belief in the individual's connection with the divine or even the genius of the individual.) In short, the very existence of a quotation endorsing your thought adds at least a dash of credibility because it proves that you are not alone in believing this idea.

If we think that this other person's quotation is worthy of consideration — because of or in spite of status — then it follows that we also ought to give weight to quotations that do not align with our own perspectives.  It's here where, to return to one of my earlier questions, quotations actually can have an impact on our own world views.

Hmm, I Never Thought of It That Way . . .

Now we are back to Poe and Janus. Quotations do not have to be mere window dressing or seals of approval for things we already believe. If we approach them with open minds, allowing them to have their say and striving to see them with another set of eyes, we can learn from them and maybe even change our minds because of them.

In the spirit of this principle, I offer you two controversial quotations, not because I necessarily agree with them — maybe I do, and maybe I don't — but because they exemplify my point: they provoke thought, which may in turn lead you to a richer or broader understanding of the world:

"It's pretentious to give answers. Who has the answers? It's a ridiculous proposition to give answers. Only fools and politicians give answers.” -Sam Shepard

"None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.” -Eugene O'Neill

Have I convinced you of the value of considering the perspectives of quotations, even when they contradict what we believe or want to believe?

If not, I can always try again — or I can just quit. After all, "there's no use in being a d--- fool about it.”