The pain of the unknown quote credit
Published by on December 26th, 2007
For no reason at all I walked past one of our bookshelves at home a this book stood out: 1001 Smartest Things Ever Said. And I had a thought…
Flicking through, there are a wealth of thought provoking and valuable quotes - just with any book of quotations, I suppose. Take a minute and consider hat links these four quotations:
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience usually comes from bad judgment.
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If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
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The best way to escape from a problem is to solve it.
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Experience is a hard teacher. She gives the test first and the lessons afterwards.
Time’s up!
The answer is they are all attributed to someone named Anonymous.
Quotations such as these are timeless as they tap into core aspects of our life experience, and they are drawn from that experience. Just imagine being the one person to so succinctly illustrate a universal truth, only to have your words attributed to Anonymous. I guess whatever afterlife you believe in could be inhabited with a handful of pretty irritated individuals.
How does a quotation become attached to the everlasting anonymous?
When words are defined in dictionaries, their first usage is recorded along with an important elements of their history - the word’s etymology. So quotations must surely have a similar recorded lineage. There must somewhere be a single recorded instance where the quote was first used. Do then all quotations attributed to Anonymous derive from texts to which an author can not be determined?
This is understandable for quotations which stretch back into history, but what of “A behaviorist is someone who pulls habits out of rats“… The word behaviorist is derived from behaviorism, the etymology of which dates back only to 1913. One would think that its origin could be determined if within that time frame.
So maybe that’s got you thinking, maybe not.
Here is a quotation which has hung around me for a number of years, and tends to pop up when I am struggling for inspiration and direction:
I attempt to paint what I have found, not what I have sought. Pablo Picasso
I would love to know if that is the full and proper quote as I cannot find any reference to those words specifically, though a few with very similar meaning attributed also to Picasso. There again, doing a little searching reveals all manner of variations to any number of quotes. Ah well, the message is far more important than the words.
If you have a favourite quote, please let me know in the comments.
No Responses to “The pain of the unknown quote credit”
November 10th, 2007 at 11:19 am
Fair points, well expressed.
Unfortunately there’s an audience for negative hyperbole (otherwise the Daily Mail would fold…) which seems to justify the constant barracking of anything novel or different. Everybody’s entitled to their opinion, but the surely the art of enlightenment includes being able to ignore the self-satisfied publicity-seekers who haven’t got anything nice to say.
There just seem to be quite a few of them around at the moment…
November 10th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I’m neither a basher or a lover of the iPhone, I simply have no need for it. I’m not a technophobe rather a celluphobe. All I need from my mobile phone is the ability to call and be called, with each task taking the minimum amount of effort on my part. I only carry a mobile phone “in case of emergencies” and very rarely use it for social calls or for that matter give out the number to all and sundry. In fact the most useful item on my mobile phone is the clock as I never wear a watch.
From what I’ve seen of the iPhone it looks very pretty but that is to be expected from Apple but from what I’ve read it’s outdated already and the fact it doesn’t have a video camera built in, so I’ve been told, puts it a poor second to some of its rivals.(Even my mobile phone has one of them, although how to work it is still a mystery to me after 10 months!!)
Now give me a phone that will make me coffee when I’m out and about and I’ll have something to rave about
November 10th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
I am neither an Apple fanboi nor a applebasher. I appreciate their design capabilities and standards and respect their control of their supply chain. However, I truly, honestly, believe that this version of the iPhone is too little too early.
What do I mean? Well, I reckon the iPhone2 will have all the capabilities we expected from the current model. 3G is a real omission on Apples part. I think the screen, while delicious looking is uncomfortable to type on. It doesn’t feed back so you have to concentrate more to use it. Silly reason? No, I don’t think so. If you have to concentrate more it tires you more using it. Subliminal problem but having used the iTouch screen it irritated me quite a bit.
But having said all that, they do LOOK wonderful. Me? I’m waiting for the whole locking/unlocking issue to resolve itself and I bet the iPhone2 will be open and network free. Any takers?
November 10th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
Well said Neil.
As you know I am indeed an Apple fanboy, but right at this moment in time I am not investing in an iPhone. Although I do want one and I can afford one, I just don’t like the idea of shelling out ¬£35 a month for something you can’t really use in 70% of the country.
I will most likely get an iPhone, but not for another year or so, simply because of the lack of 3G.