"The point of quotations is that one can use another's words to be insulting"
About this Quote
Weaponizing someone else’s eloquence is a peculiarly civilized pleasure, and Heilbrun names it with a deadpan snap. The line turns the wholesome, schoolroom idea of quotation on its head. We’re told quotations confer authority, preserve culture, build arguments. Heilbrun’s intent is to expose the other function: outsourcing aggression. If you can smuggle an insult in through a revered voice, you get to sound measured while still drawing blood.
The subtext is about gendered and institutional power. Heilbrun spent her career tracking how women are trained into politeness, indirection, and plausible deniability. Quotation becomes a socially acceptable blade: you can cut without “being” cutting. It’s the academic version of “don’t blame me, I’m just repeating what X said,” a rhetorical laundering that lets the speaker keep clean hands while the target wears the stain.
What makes the line work is its compressed cynicism. “The point” is totalizing on purpose, an exaggeration that reads as a wink; she’s not literally claiming all quotations are insults, she’s spotlighting the motive that polite culture prefers not to confess. The infinitive “to be insulting” matters too: not to argue, not to persuade, but to perform a small dominance move, to signal membership in a club that recognizes the reference and the sting.
Contextually, it lands as a critique of citation culture itself: footnotes as daggers, epigraphs as alibis. Heilbrun reminds us that even our most “objective” tools come preloaded with social intent.
The subtext is about gendered and institutional power. Heilbrun spent her career tracking how women are trained into politeness, indirection, and plausible deniability. Quotation becomes a socially acceptable blade: you can cut without “being” cutting. It’s the academic version of “don’t blame me, I’m just repeating what X said,” a rhetorical laundering that lets the speaker keep clean hands while the target wears the stain.
What makes the line work is its compressed cynicism. “The point” is totalizing on purpose, an exaggeration that reads as a wink; she’s not literally claiming all quotations are insults, she’s spotlighting the motive that polite culture prefers not to confess. The infinitive “to be insulting” matters too: not to argue, not to persuade, but to perform a small dominance move, to signal membership in a club that recognizes the reference and the sting.
Contextually, it lands as a critique of citation culture itself: footnotes as daggers, epigraphs as alibis. Heilbrun reminds us that even our most “objective” tools come preloaded with social intent.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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