Nigel Rees Quotes

Nigel Rees serves up witty, humble reminders about knowledge and fame that tease the careful quote-hunter.

15 quotes

  1. My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw - which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them.

  2. An analagous process I shall call Churchillian Drift...Whereas quotations with an apothegmatic feel are normally ascribed to Shaw, those with a more grandiose or belligerent tone are, as if by osmosis, credited to Churchill. All humorous remarks obviously made by a female originated, of course, with Dorothy Parker. All quotations in translation, on the other hand, should be attributed to Goethe (with 'I think' obligatory).

  3. I am only too aware that I am open to Rees's Second Law of Quotation: 'However sure you are that you have attributed a quotation correctly, an earlier source will be pointed out to you.'

  4. Lord Castlerosse was taken to task by Nancy Astor over the size of his stomach. 'What would you say if that was on a woman?' she asked, pointedly. 'Half an hour ago it was,' he replied.

  5. I was broadcast-struck from an early age; I had saved up for a tape recorder and started making programmes.

  6. My job involves searching for 'lost' quotations - that is, trying to find out who came up with a quotable saying that lingers in someone's mind and which they wish to use for their own purpose and which they cannot find in conventional dictionaries of quotation.

  7. Rees's First Law of Quotations: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to George Bernard Shaw.

  8. You wish to put a positive construction on your deeds and words.

  9. People will say what they want to say, in the way they want to.

  10. How come there's only one Monopolies Commission?

  11. I was terribly shy and never said anything in class. Then I started getting into school plays. When you've got words to say, you've got a sort of armour.

  12. I got into New College, Oxford. The ethos was that you could work - or not.

  13. Democracy is too good to share with just anybody.

  14. It is part of politics to make things look better than they really are. What is a spin doctor but a serial euphemiser?

  15. I was absolutely a non-starter at games. My report for rugby said, 'Nigel's chief contribution is his presence on the field.' I used to pray for rain and sometimes it did rain - and we played anyway.