On Quotation

It is a standard rhetorical device to quote famous figures. Indeed, teachers of rhetoric in their various forms--forensics, composition, etc.--often enjoins their students to begin a work with such a quotation.

Like much else in the standard teaching I must admit that this advice has never sat well with me (hence, that book I wrote--devoted to aspects of content rather than form, but coming from the same experience).

After all, the art and craft of writing are about expressing one's own thoughts--and it seems to me ever more the case that this is best done in one's own words, with borrowing someone else's words much more likely than not to confuse matters.

There is, too, the intent so often behind such quotation--the logical fallacy of an "appeal to authority," and that for the unfortunate purpose of making something that may be quite banal sound impressive by linking it to some Great Man or Great Woman. It also seems to me smarmily manipulative, the act of quoting itself intended to make the speaker look like an Authority themselves by creating an illusion of their having a greater literacy than they actually possess. This is especially the case as so many know nothing more of the words they quote, or the source, than the quote itself--something once upon a time picked out of a book and now plucked out of a web site and shoehorned in without regard to origin or context. (Consider, for example, what has become of "To thine own self be true.")

My advice: if you must quote, quote only what you actually know well, preferably very well--and do it only when you are sure it will actually improve what you have to say rather than an attempt to show off all too likely to leave you looking yet another fool who thinks the world will take him for an emperor because of the purple patches he has shabbily sown onto his rags.