We often turn to quotations from others for education, inspiration, or comfort. Sometimes quotes are useful to meditate upon, and sometimes they’re simply amusing. Here are several quotes about quotes from famous figures. Not all of them are positive responses to the art of the quote, but they’re all entertaining:
1: “He wrapped himself in quotations – as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.” — Rudyard Kipling, Many Inventions
2: “It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.” — Winston S. Churchill
3: “A very wise quote is a spectacular waterfall! When you see it, you feel its power!” — Mehmet Murat Ildan
4: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson
5: “Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.” — Ambrose Bierce, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary
6: “A quotation is a handy thing to have about, saving one the trouble of thinking for oneself, always a laborious business.” – A.A. Milne, If I Man
7: “I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.” — Marlene Dietrich
8: “In quoting others, we cite ourselves.” — Julio Cortazar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds
9: “Be careful — with quotations, you can damn anything.” — Andre Malraux
10: “In the garden of literature, the highest and the most charismatic flowers are always the quotations.” — Mehmet Murat Ildan
11: “Quotations express your life experience.” — Jay Doll
12: “A facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought.” — Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night
13: “Speaking one’s mind once is more honorable than quoting a thousand men.” — Mokokoma Mokhonoana
14: “Did you ever read my words, or did you merely finger through them for quotations which you thought might valuably support an already conceived idea concerning some old and distorted connection between us?” — Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
15: “You can tell a really wonderful quote by the fact that it’s attributed to a whole raft of wits.” — Anna Quindlen, Imagined London: A Tour of the World’s Greatest Fictional City
16: “Quoting is an attitude and practice, central to aesthetic and literary experiences as different from each other as the sublime and camp.” — William Flesch
17: “What is a quote? A quote (cognate with quota) is a cut, a section, a slice of someone else’s orange. You suck the slice, toss the rind, skate away. Part of what you enjoy in a documentary technique is the sense of banditry. To loot someone else’s life or sentences and make off with a point of view, which is called ‘objective’ because you can make anything into an object by treating it this way, is exciting and dangerous.” — Anne Carson, Decreation