Authority
Plucking Words Out of Thin Air
Why we should be wary of quotes
“A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself” — A.A. Milne
We all love quotes and catchphrases. Carpe diem. I think therefore I am. The method’s in the madness. Every great journey starts with a single step. Some are attributed to a single person, some are general truisms or collective truths.
But what does it say about us when we repeat what someone else says to make our point?
Who Said That?
Referencing someone else makes us feel like we’re giving more weight to our words. Our argument must be true because X McY once said it.
Indeed, by using a quote we are enlisting an authority to fight alongside us. We’re showing that this idea we’re advocating isn’t just a crazy opinion we’ve cooked up, but it is steeped in logical thinking and interrogation. We’re name dropping someone who supposedly knows their stuff.
The source of a quote is important. When we quote Stephen Hawking, we know that the fact the words originated in his immense scientific mind will convince people of their veracity.
‘The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is illusion of knowledge’ — Stephen Hawking
Sounds impressive. In this Quora thread, people discuss what he meant by the phrase. Amidst the squabbling, the surprising thing is that nobody seems interested in situating the phrase in its original context.
In this case, the attribution to Stephen Hawking may be erroneous. The author and educator, Daniel J. Boorstin, used the expression in 1984 in an interview in The Washington Post — it wasn’t until 2001 that the phrase was first quoted as coming from Hawking.
Does it matter? It probably shouldn’t. If the idea is sound then it shouldn’t make a difference who voiced it.
But the very fact we love to stick a big name to a quote shows that the source is often as important as the words themselves. Would we be as impressed with the quote if it was attributed to Boorstin? I think maybe not.
Get It Done
I am a big fan of brevity. Short combinations of words have the power to distill great truths into manageable chunks.
Can a pithy phrase really communicate a complex idea sufficiently? No, of course it can’t.
An advertising slogan, like Nike’s Just Do It, is not that difficult to understand. But catchphrases can become dangerous when used to sell something more complicated than trainers.
The 2016 UK Referendum and its aftermath is a perfect example of the power catchy slogans wield. In this case, three words have convinced people again and again to believe in something devoid of all meaning. GET BREXIT DONE. But which Brexit? TAKE BACK CONTROL. Control of what? Take it back from whom? LEAVE MEANS LEAVE. But what does leave actually mean?
“Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.” — Ambrose Bierce
Quoting can have similarly damaging impacts. Can an idea ever be extracted from the specific conditions in which it was conceived?
On the surface, we’d say yes. Knowledge must be transferable from one situation to another in order to serve any practical purpose.
But it can be problematic to take one person’s words uttered in a particular situation and use them to support a different issue that may be nuanced in such a way that the concepts are no longer applicable.
Context
Quoting out of context can lead to all manner of problems because meaning can be twisted. Words are flexible: they can have one sense in a particular context and a completely different one in a different situation. Irony introduces a new shade of meaning, while omission, emphasis and rhetorical devices run the risk of falsely representing the foundation of a thought.
A common example is:
This is the best book I’ve read all year!
Evidently, there is no context as to the number of books the happy reviewer has read — it could be their only one.
This is the context fallacy. It can be split into two types:
- Straw Man: Quoting out of context in order to misrepresent somebody’s position without actually engaging with their idea. The gist of the argument is ignored and a minor or irrelevant detail is picked up and twisted to discredit the genuine argument.
- Appeal to Authority: Quoting an “expert” out of context, who may even have been arguing for the opposite outcome to what the quote is used to support. Appealing to authority in a disingenuous manner is dangerous because the listener may be more inclined to believe this misrepresented opinion as a result of the added weight supposedly behind it.
Musical Chairs
To prove the dangers of quotations, I’m going to finish by scandalously (mis-)quoting one of my favourite Medium writers:
‘There are too many bums and not enough seats, and so a deadly game of musical chairs has begun.’
Is Eli Snow in favour of a Hunger Games-esque population-control measure?
Well… probably not. It turns out she only envisages such dystopian happenings in the Illumination Community.
Watch me twist and spin Desiree Driesenaar’s words to suit my own agenda here:
This article opens with one of my favourite quotes:
