"Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another"
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Bierce turns a polite literary practice into a minor crime scene: “Quotation” becomes not homage but malpractice, an “act” defined by its inevitable failure. The joke lands because it weaponizes the dictionary form. A definition is supposed to stabilize meaning; Bierce uses that authority to smuggle in distrust. He’s not just being snide about sloppy citations. He’s arguing that secondhand language is structurally unreliable, that the moment words leave their original speaker they start degrading like a message passed down a line.
“Repeating erroneously” is the blade. It implies error isn’t an occasional accident but the default condition of quotation. Memory distorts, context vanishes, motives creep in. Even the most conscientious quoter selects, trims, and frames; fidelity is a performance. Bierce’s cynicism is aimed less at readers than at the social power quotation confers. Quoting someone is a way to borrow their credibility, to draft their authority into your argument. By calling it erroneous, he punctures that borrowed prestige and reminds us how easily “as X said” becomes a rhetorical costume.
The subtext also reflects Bierce’s world: late-19th-century American journalism, booming with mass print, political sloganeering, and aphorisms that traveled faster than verification. In that ecosystem, quotation isn’t just repetition; it’s transmission, mutation, propaganda. Bierce’s intent is to make you laugh, then flinch: if quotation is inherently misquotation, what else in public discourse is built on copied fragments mistaken for truth?
“Repeating erroneously” is the blade. It implies error isn’t an occasional accident but the default condition of quotation. Memory distorts, context vanishes, motives creep in. Even the most conscientious quoter selects, trims, and frames; fidelity is a performance. Bierce’s cynicism is aimed less at readers than at the social power quotation confers. Quoting someone is a way to borrow their credibility, to draft their authority into your argument. By calling it erroneous, he punctures that borrowed prestige and reminds us how easily “as X said” becomes a rhetorical costume.
The subtext also reflects Bierce’s world: late-19th-century American journalism, booming with mass print, political sloganeering, and aphorisms that traveled faster than verification. In that ecosystem, quotation isn’t just repetition; it’s transmission, mutation, propaganda. Bierce’s intent is to make you laugh, then flinch: if quotation is inherently misquotation, what else in public discourse is built on copied fragments mistaken for truth?
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | The Devil's Dictionary — entry 'Quotation' (definition: "Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another"), Ambrose Bierce. |
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