What are quotations for?
This arises over a list of generally anti-war, anti-war-leader quotes posted at the Gamer’s Nook. One of them included the bogus Julius Caesar quote that’s been floating around the Net for a few years. I noted that to Jeff, the author of the post, and he amended the entry, but added, “It’s a good quote despite not coming from Caesar.”
Which made me consider. Or, rather, go “huh”?
So, why do we quote?
Two reasons, I suppose. First, for the felicitous beauty of the language used, usually (nearly, but not always) in support of a position we hold. Someone has said something better than we feel capable of, so we quote it. That seems to be where Jeff is coming from.
The second reason is related, and, I think, even more important — the appeal to authority. In its most obvious form, that could be a reference to Scripture (“See? It’s in the Bible, so it must be so!”). In academic fields, it’s less, um, canonical, but still used to show that it just isn’t you asserting something, but folks who are accepted as Big Thinkers.
In everyday discourse, it’s much the same. If I quote Einstein, you think, “Hey, he was smart, he must know what he’s talking about.” If I quote the Dalai Lama, ditto. Or Twain, or whomever. We ascribe a certain wisdom to certain writers (sometimes even outside of their field of expertise), and so quoting them to support our point lends a certain wisdom to the point we’re making.
Think the appeal to authority doesn’t matter? When was the last time you heard someone quote a political enemy (except to ironically point out something goofy they said or something hypocritical they uttered)? I mean, George W. Bush has some keen speech writers, as did Bill Clinton before him — surely there’s something in their body of speeches that anyone could utter without taking a political stance against their beliefs. Except, by appealing to their authority, they vest that authority in someone they dislike, and so demur from doing so. It’s the same thing as some conservative Christians having problems quoting the Qur’an, even though there’s a lot there, expressed delightfully, that they would agree with.
The only other time you’ll usually see an authority quoted that the writer disagrees with is when it tars someone else with the same brush. Thus, on the GN page, we have the Goering quote (which I discussed a year ago here), which is usually referenced as much to implicitly draw equivalency between the Bushies and the Third Reich as it is for what it has to say (which is that everyone in WWII, from Roosevelt to Churchill to Stalin to Hitler to Tojo, cajoled and tricked their unwilling populace into fighting a war).
An in-between case here is the quote-from-the-media, where an imaginary character (e.g., the Blackadder quote from the GN page) says something witty or profound. We don’t necessarily mean to say that Blackadder (or Capt. Kirk, or Xander, or Sam Spade, or Gandalf the Grey) is someone we believe in, or sometimes even somebody we admire. Nor do we as much mean that we agree with the author behind the character, though that begins to blur a bit as time passes (and, of course, assumes that the author agrees with the sentiment). But we agree with the sentiment, and we think the character (often a protagonist) has had some insight into the world, so we ascribe a certain authority to it — but less than we’d ascribe to a Real Live Person.
I’m not quite sure where I’m going with this, except that quotation of folks to establish or support a point is an interesting, and sometimes tricky, phenomenon.
And why not, then, end with a few quotations on quotation?
“QUOTATION, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.”
— Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), The Devil’s Dictionary
“By necessity, by proclivity and by delight, we all quote.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), Letters and Social Aims, “Quotation and Originality” (1876)
“She had a pretty gift for quotation, which is a serviceable substitute for wit.”
— William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965)
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
— Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
THE DOCTOR: “What’s the use of a good quotation if you can’t change it?”
— Doctor Who
“A quotation at the right moment is like bread to the famished.”
— The Talmud
Students of critical reasoning distinguish two different kinds of appeal to authority. One is a fallacy, the other is not. Fallacious appeal to authority involves appeal to someone not qualified in the area of discussion, either because they don’t have the right education or experience, or because there is no area of discussion to be qualified in. For example, quoting Einstein on dentistry would be a fallacy since he’s not a known expert on dentistry. Quoting anyone on the science of belly-button lint would be a fallacy since there’s no area of expertise for someone to be expert on.
The proper appeal to authority occurs when you appeal to a recognized expert in a field of expertise in which they are qualified. Einstein is a recognized expert on physics, so appealing to him on that kind of topic is appropriate. We often appeal to someone like Einstein in areas where they are not qualified on the grounds that they are really smart or highly-respected. But neither of these is a good reason to think that what Einstein said about dentistry or belly-button lint is worth listening to.
Quotations, as most people use them, tend to fall in the first category. They are often taken out of context, and people who use them frequently act as if they think that anything that comes from the mouth of a wise person is true. That’s just not the case, and I think that regarding quotations as a source of wisdom without thinking critically about whether or not they really apply in a particular context is shortcut that protects people from really thinking about the issues.
>>Dave