I have always enjoyed and collected quotations. I must have thousands, written down in notebooks or clipped from newspapers. My collection has no particular purpose and no particular subject, but they are all examples of wit and cleverness at work. They make you think. Usually they make you think “I wish I’d said that.”
I opened an old notebook at random – the page is from 2008. “I believe in freedom, democracy, and the human condition,” said George W. Bush in a BBC interview. That makes you think. I suppose we still believe in the human condition; we don’t have much choice, but the rest of the quote seems rather dated. On the same page, I find this from William Hazlitt, a satirical eighteenth-century essayist. “Man is the only animal who laughs and weeps because he is the only animal who sees the difference between what things are and what things ought to be.”
That’s not dated at all.
Quoting someone cleverer than yourself is rather like cheating, but it’s hard to resist. Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “I hate quotations, tell me what you know,” meaning “Don’t give me this secondhand stuff, tell me your own thoughts in your own words.” Well, we would all like to be witty, but our own words may be less brilliant, and less convincing. Good quotations, those tiny packages of words that contain volumes, are irresistible.
“Anarchy cannot be tolerated unless it is carefully disguised and presented as a part of the free market economy.” That timely observation comes from the playwright John Mortimer. From Kurt Vonnegut, another prolific source of alternative wisdom: “All that is necessary for good to triumph over evil is that the good should act more like the Mafia.” You can’t argue with that. We learn from quotations simply because they are short and memorable.
“As long as people continue to believe in absurdities, they will continue to commit atrocities,” Voltaire said. “A belief is not true just because it is useful.” Henri Frédéric Amiel.
The prodigious poet, essayist, lexicographer, critic, philosopher and wit, Dr. Samuel Johnson left us a treasure trove of quips and clever remarks that have passed into the language. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” “A decent provision for the poor is the true test of a civilization.” “No people can be great who have ceased to be virtuous.” And Shakespeare is notoriously full of useful phrases, like “The empty vessel makes the most noise.”
Have all the most brilliant and clever things been said or written already? Sometimes, it seems like it. But we do have this huge resource: the wisdom of the past. The ancient Romans, who had more experience with chaotic politics, conspiracies, civil wars, and despotism than anyone in history until recently, certainly had the gift of wit and brevity.
In a phrase that has echoed down the ages, the emperor Tiberius said: “The people want to be fooled, so let them be fooled.” And the historian Livy wrote: “We can no longer endure our vices or endure the remedies for them.” Think about it.
