And I quote...

[kwoht], verb: to repeat (a passage, phrase, etc.) from a book, speech, or the like, as by way of authority, illustration, etc.

"I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself." -Marlene Dietrich.

Exactly. Ol' Marlene here said what I'm thinking several decades ago, and she put it far more elegantly than i could have done. I could just end this post right now. But I won't.

If you know where to look, you can find a good quote on more or less anything, it seems everything worth saying has already been said. Estimates are that between 69 billion and 110 billion people have populated the earth since about one million years ago. So many brilliant people have come and gone, so many great ideas and comments are already out there, that being original has become a problem. "What a good thing Adam had. When he said a good thing he knew nobody had said it before" - Mark Twain. Well, I couldn't find a single good quote by Adam, go figure. The level of authority in what you're trying to get across rises significantly if you can use the words of some long gone genious to back them up. To quote David H. Comins: "People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first". Benjamin Franklin said "Time is money". He also said "God helps them that help themselves", "Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today" and "There was never a good war and never a bad peace". He was mistaken on some of his theories concerning electricity, but what a genious, huh?

People seem to think so, so in attempts to sound more intelligent, or to prove a point, they throw out a quote by someone a lot smarter than them here and there. I know I occasionally do. Samuel Palmer said "Wise men make proverbs, but fools repeat them", and Mary Pettibone said "The next best thing to being clever is being able to quote someone who is." Is it true, that in my use of quotations to prove my cause and ideas better, I actually weaken them by letting people see my lack of faith in my own wit? Maybe so, maybe I should put more effort into coming up with something genious by myself and let fools of the future use my words as their own. But what if it all actually has been said before? It seems Alfred North Whitehead was convinced of this when he said "Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it".

Fool or not, it so happens that finding the right quotes, and using them correctly, is harder than you would think. In books on quotations or webistes dedicated to the matter, you will often find them categorized by subject, so finding one close to what you're discussing won't be very hard. But findig the one that strikes hard, throws light on the matter, and gives your cause a deeper meaning, that is somewhat close to an artform. I mean, H.L. Mencken had this to say about Shakespeare: "After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations". And I personally prefer Anatole France's way of looking at it: "When a thing has been said and well, have no scruple. Take it and copy it".

Feel free to quote me on any of this.

Today's thought provoker:
The English language contains about 540 000 words, estimated to be about 5 times as many as during Shakespeare's time.