Mamatas - Quotes Every Man Should Know

Copyright 2013 by Quirk Productions, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Number: 2012953945

eISBN: 978-1-59474-656-7

Typeset in Goudy and Monotype Old Style

Designed by Katie Hatz
Production management by John J. McGurk

Quirk Books
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Philadelphia, PA 19106
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I wish the first word I ever said was the
word quote, so right before I die I could
say unquote.

Steven Wright, American comedian

The thing about quotes from
the Internet is that its hard to
verify their authenticity.

Abraham Lincoln, U.S. president,
collected on the Internet circa 2012

Why does the world need another book of quotations, especially ones every man should know? True, there are boatloads of quote books out there already. Not to mention websites and social media. Twitter is essentially a crowdsourced aphorism-generating machine, and your Facebook news feed probably gets plastered over on a daily basis by quotations with visual accompaniment (usually some kind of cat). We are all drowning in a sea of quotations, our lungs too full of wisdom to even breathe.

We are all drowning in a sea of
quotations, our lungs too full of
wisdom to even breathe.

Nick Mamatas, American writer

Damn, theres another one.

The endless lists of quotations, the tweets, the Facebook memesall of these are why this book is necessary. Because what guy has time to sift through that sea of mud, searching for the shiniest pearls of pithy insight? Who wants to wade elbow-deep through useless clichs about cats, sunsets, and chocolate to find time-tested words of wisdom about stuff guys value, like bravery, success, and donuts? Whos going to make sure that these quotations were actually said by the people theyre said to be said by, sparing you the embarrassment of some poindexter questioning the historical accuracy of Lincoln referencing the Internet?

This guy, thats who. (You cant see me, but my thumbs are pointing at my face.)

What we hope to accomplish in this little volume is provide a selection of the best quotations from the world over and time immemorial. There are quotes you can bust out at a cocktail party to seem intelligent, quotes you can drop on the head of some fool who needs schoolin, quotes you can lean on to add levity to your next awkward silence, quotes you can use to convince a woman youre on her side (were just giving you the words; the sincerity is up to you). Were even arming you with strategic quotes that you can whip out to out-quote anyone who dares to brandish a clumsy adage in your presence (because, as Voltaire famously said, A witty saying proves nothing.)

Incidentally, that Voltaire quotation comes from Le dner du comte de Boulainvilliers, and the context was a critique of the authority and ideological hold of the Catholic church in eighteenth-century France. In case it comes up at a cocktail party.

Be sparing. A little quoting goes a long way. You want to come off more clever quipster and less exhaustive human database. Choose a few favorites for regular rotation, and refresh as necessary.

Be appropriate. Deploy a quote thats suited not just to the occasion but to the audience as well. Anyone from George Carlin to George W. Bush might be polarizing given the particular content of the quote and context in which it is used.

Be enlightening. Not everyones smart enough to have this book in his back pocket, after all. Be prepared to contextualize unusual or unfamiliar quotes and leave everyone around you a little more educated than when you found them.

Be bold. A well-crafted turn of phrase can be a powerful statement, but only if you put it out there. Dont hesitate. Speak up. Or, to quote your kindergarten teacher, use your words.

What do ancient sages, tribal prophets, and snippets of texts perhaps written under the influence of psychotropic mushrooms have to do with us today, in our topsy-turvy world of globalized economies and sexting with smartphones? Perhaps not much, but sometimes a quotation survives because it is apt for the human condition on a transhistorical, transcultural level. (Though to be honest, sometimes a quotation survives because its so utterly ambiguous that it can be used arbitrarily in virtually any situation.) The philosophers of the past struggled with many of the same questions we face today. What does it mean to be human? What sort of life is the good life? What is mans relationship to the state? How can I justify boozing it up occasionally or taking frequent naps?

A store of quotations from the ancient world can be useful in any number of scenarios: boardroom discussions with your boss, heart-to-heart talks with your kid, verbal tussles with that friend of a friend who thinks hes so damn clever. Dont hesitate to draw these big guns when you need to shoot your way out of a rhetorical corner. For as Aristotle said in his Rhetoric: It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs, but not of being unable to defend himself with speech and reason, when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs. (Warning: Not all ancient quotations are as easy to memorize as that one.)

The Greeks were cultural innovators; they created many things we still use today, such as democracy, philosophy, toast, and the vending machine. (No kiddingthe Greeks had a coin-operated vending machine in the first century BC .) They werent the first to struggle with what it means to be human, but their ideas were rigorous enough to last the test of three thousand years of Western civilization. And now, you can fake your way through a conversation about them with these nuggets of wisdom.

The unexamined life is not worth living for a human being.

Socrates, Greek philosopher,
quoted in Platos Apology

By means of beauty all beautiful things become beautiful.

Socrates, Greek philosopher,
quoted in Platos Phdo