"I really didn't say everything I said." - Yogi Berra
Winston Churchill said, "It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations." Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I'm sick of quotations, tell me what you know." The
truth is somewhere in between.
Famous quotations are not only misquoted; they are, often as not, misattributed. Therefore, anyone who writes or speaks for a living should have several books of quotations -
"Quote unQuotes" or more simply "QuQ's," if you will. After all, as an anonymous skeptic once observed, "Wretched excess is never enough."
Borrowing from the economic and computer worlds, we can break QuQ's into three groups: mini, micro and macro.
Mini QuQ's are specialist books either by subject, theme or author. Examples would include: The Portable Curmudgeon, by Jon Winokur; Thoughts of Chairman Buffett
(Thirty Years of Unconventional Wisdom from the Sage of Omaha), compiled by Siimon Reynolds; and one book to peruse before the 2008 elections, Political Babble (The 1,000
Dumbest Things Said by Politicians), by David Olive.
Micro QuQ's are best described as anthologies of wit and wisdom on topical topics ranging from Primetime Proverbs (The Book of TV Quotes) by Jack Mingo and John Javna;
The Literary Spy (Quotations on Espionage & Intelligence), compiled and annotated by Charles E. Lathrop; and Loose Cannons (Devastating Dish from the World's
Wildest Women), compiled by Autumn Stephens.
Macro QuQ's are usually the magnum opus of demented individuals or dedicated organizations that have spent years collecting and organizing thousands of quotations. These are
big books - literally. Examples include: A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient & Modern Sources (1347 pages), selected and edited by H.
L. Mencken; The Forbes Book of Business Quotations (992 pages), edited by Ted Goodman; and Encarta Book of Quotations (1319 pages), edited by Bill Swainson.
Some good examples all communicators should have in their libraries:
Mini QuQ:
The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker with Joseph A. Maciariello (2004), though perhaps not considered a QuQ by purists, still has the key ingredients for any
communicator. Each page begins with a "Drucker Proverb," or quote capturing the essence of a business topic. This is elaborated upon by a couple of hundred words from one of
Drucker's 60-plus books or hundreds of articles; at the end is an "Action Point," which is the takeaway to think about and apply to the day to day problems faced by people in
business.
Micro QuQ:
Peter's Quotations (Ideas for our Time) by Dr. Laurence J. Peter (Morrow, 1977) is a must-have. Emboldened by the success of his tongue-in-cheek management
book The Peter Principle, which opined, "In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to the level of his incompetence," Dr. Peter produced this collection "to bring
together in an easily accessible form some of the best expressed thoughts, ancient and modern, that are especially illuminating for our time."
A benefit of assembling and publishing quotations, of course, is that one can inject one's own bon mots into the text. Dr. Peter did this 42 times, and regrettably most
of his contributions are forgettable.
Regardless, this book is worth having because it was an early attempt to make connections between quotations and zeitgeist. Peter was an innovator because he grouped quotations
in terms of the central idea, not just because the word or subject heading occurred in the quote.
Macro QuQ:
Now if you only have room on your desk for one QuQ, there is no question it should be The Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred R. Shapiro (Yale University
Press, 2006).
Shapiro works at the Lillian Goldman Library at Yale Law School and has what can best be described as a catholic range of academic and professional accomplishments. He
earned an undergraduate degree from MIT, a law degree from Harvard and a graduate degree in Library Science from Catholic University.
Never an aspiring parvenu, Shapiro nonetheless had his first brush with celebrity 10 years ago when he was profiled in a front-page story in The Wall Street Journal as
the founder/inventor of "legal citology," a method of cataloguing footnotes in law review articles.
At some point thereafter, he decided to apply his pioneering legal citology work to the field of quotations. Even with great advances in powerful online newspaper search
engines such as ProQuest, NewspaperArchive, JSTOR, etc., it took Shapiro and a cadre of volunteer research librarians around the world six years to compile
this book.
The result is a book that is impeccably researched, reader-friendly, and one you should own.
CONTACT:
Peter Brinch provides strategic planning and tactical implementation communications counsel to small and mid-sized businesses. He can be reached at [email protected].