Quotable
I heard a Soren Kierkegaard quote used in a TV program the other night and it caught my interest. My wife and I have been watching the series “Madam Secretary” (now old – it ran 6 seasons and ended in 2019).
It’s a show we both like and can watch together now and then. We’re in the third season now, after having started watching well over a year ago. You can tell that we’re not exactly cooperative “binge watchers,” but we do enjoy the show.
Soren Kierkegaard was Danish and lived in the 1800s. He was a sort of philosopher, among other things, and had some interesting things to say about life. I don’t quote him very often because his name is a bit of a struggle to pronounce. (Go ahead, try to say his name three times in a row)
Here’s the quote from the show: “The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.” Chew on that for a minute.
A couple of other quotes of his which I like are these:
“If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern would, I would prescribe silence.”
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
I like quotations. I know many of you do too.
To become a “quotation,” the spoken words need to have a quality about them that makes them noteworthy enough that someone says “aha! – that was good.” The spoken words are significant enough to have survived the moment and live on in memory or in written form.
I have known people over the years who have collected quotes in little memo books or index card files. I used to do that. Good quotes should be witty or humorous or profound or insightful or just plain appealing to the soul. The best quotes are a combination of all those things.
If Grandpa said, “I’m gonna go out and plant corn,” that doesn’t qualify as a quote. But when my dad said, “Better a belly busted than good food wasted,” – that was a quote (which I’m sure originated somewhere else).
Politicians are known for quoting other politicians and also for creating “new quotes.” The irony of this is that in many cases it wasn’t the person giving the speech who actually came up with the memorable quote.
Nameless speechwriters toil over sentences in speeches to come up with language that “has a ring to it.” But the credit goes to the politician who reads what the speechwriter has written.
It’s an interesting study to research the origin of many of the most famous quotes given by American presidents. As it turns out, many are recycled in some form or another either by design or happenstance.
For example, Kennedy’s “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” sounds a lot like what President Harding said at the 1916 Republican convention. “We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation.”
Speaking of politicians, I read quite a few interesting things in the biography of Neal Maxwell, an LDS Church apostle, who died a number of years ago. He was in Washington, D.C., in the early 1950s as an assistant to Utah’s Senator Wallace Bennett.
Maxwell was in the presence of the infamous Senator McCarthy when McCarthy was fuming about the lack of television coverage at one of his events. McCarthy said, “This is the most unheard of thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Some of the best quotes come from that guy named “Anonymous.” Here’s some I’ve heard that I don’t have a source for.
“What makes stupidity really insufferable is that it is forever in action – idiocy knows no rest.”
“Be Kind, Have Grace, Give Thanks, Speak Love, and Stay Swaggy.”
These now are some quotes that take shots at men. I’m not sure why there seems to be so quite a few of them around lately.
“Men think monogamy is something you make dining tables out of.” “Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself – like, for instance, he can’t find any clean socks.”
“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.”
“The average girl would rather have beauty than brains because she knows that the average man can see much better than he can think.”
“All men hear is blah, blah, blah, blah, SEX, blah, blah, blah, FOOD, blah, blah, blah, BEER.”— Dennis Leary
Of course, it can go the other way too.
“Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.” — Rod Stewart
“My advice to you is to get married: If you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.” — Socrates
Religious leaders are always a good source of quotes. I liked this one that I heard recently: “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.” — Buddha. Mother Teresa said: “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”
A couple of weeks ago, my 7-year-old granddaughter Scout said something that we’ve been quoting. When asked if she had put sunscreen lotion on, she replied, “Yes, I put some on a couple of whiles ago.”
Looking up quotes or noticing them in your everyday life can be entertaining. And if you want to spice up your conversation or make a point, use a quotation. But as I often tell people, “Don’t quote me.” — Merrill