Please Quote Me

Quote of the day:
“Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.”
--Alfred North Whitehead

Whitehead’s statement resonates with me. It’s why I enjoy coming across quotable material in my daily reading, viewing and listening.

It’s fashionable to look down on quotes, as if they are some form of microscopic literature for dummies. But I think excellent insight can be found in a well-formed, pithy sentence or two.

Quotes are criticized for the very thing that makes them work: brevity--sometimes extreme brevity. I think there is great value, and maybe even virtue, in getting across a vital idea in just a few words.

There are many people in our culture who seem to think that the longer a statement is, the more intellectual and erudite it is.

I’ve got news for those people. Windiness is just windiness. The best writers happen also to be the best editors (or to have the best editors). Length does not equal greatness.

Naturally, it’s just as possible to be stupid and irrelevant in a short quote as in a half-hour speech. But at least the dumb short quote doesn’t take a half hour.

As you can tell, I’m a huge fan of pith. Except the helmet kind.