"Quotations, like much better things, has its abuses"
About this Quote
A neat little booby trap for anyone who’s ever tried to win an argument by outsourcing it to a dead authority. Disraeli’s line is doing two things at once: granting quotations their prestige ("much better things") while quietly stripping them of their presumed innocence. The charm is in the moral reversal. We’re trained to treat quotes as intellectual shorthand, a compact way to borrow brilliance. Disraeli reminds us that the very qualities that make quotations valuable - portability, memorability, the aura of inherited wisdom - are precisely what make them easy to weaponize.
The subtext is less anti-quotation than anti-complacency. He’s warning about a style of thinking that mistakes citation for judgment. In an age of expanding print culture, commonplace books, salons, and pamphlet politics, quotations circulated like currency, and like currency they could be clipped, counterfeited, or hoarded. A line torn from its original setting can launder complexity into certainty. It can turn a writer’s tentative insight into a reader’s blunt instrument.
Even the slightly awkward grammar ("has its abuses") works to his advantage: it feels like a proverb that’s been handled too much, worn down at the edges - which fits the message. Disraeli is nudging us toward an ethic of reading: respect sources, but don’t kneel to them. The highest use of a quotation isn’t to end thought; it’s to start it, then step beyond it.
The subtext is less anti-quotation than anti-complacency. He’s warning about a style of thinking that mistakes citation for judgment. In an age of expanding print culture, commonplace books, salons, and pamphlet politics, quotations circulated like currency, and like currency they could be clipped, counterfeited, or hoarded. A line torn from its original setting can launder complexity into certainty. It can turn a writer’s tentative insight into a reader’s blunt instrument.
Even the slightly awkward grammar ("has its abuses") works to his advantage: it feels like a proverb that’s been handled too much, worn down at the edges - which fits the message. Disraeli is nudging us toward an ethic of reading: respect sources, but don’t kneel to them. The highest use of a quotation isn’t to end thought; it’s to start it, then step beyond it.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
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