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.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Rees observes that people often attribute quotes to famous figures like Shaw when they don't know the real source.
- In plain terms
- People guess famous people said quotes when they are unsure.
- What can you take from it?
- Famous names are often wrongly credited with unknown quotes.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Who do you assume said a quote?
- How do you check quote origins?
Another view
Sometimes the attribution is correct by chance.
More from Nigel Rees
An analagous process I shall call Churchillian Drift...Whereas quotations with an apothegmatic feel are normally ascribed to Shaw, those with a more grandiose …
Permalink to quote #2 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 w…
Permalink to quote #3
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