Not So Quotable Me
I got sent a copy of the latest issue of “Quotes, Notes & Anecdotes,” a 116-page journal of sparkling quotations suitable for use by after-dinner speakers (e.g., “Teaching kids to count is fine, but teaching them what counts is best” — Bob Talbert, US journalist, 1982). The accompanying note explained that I was sent this issue because I’m quoted in it. Cool! Unfortunately, they didn’t say which page. So, I quickly thumbed through, and there, amidst quotations from King James I, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, Howard Zinn, and, well, a guy who parachutes with a dachsund tucked into his pocket, there I find the insight so keen, so piercing, so arresting, that it has earned me a spot in this pantheon of blurbers:
We get to kick in the teeth the idealized — and constricted — set of behaviors known as professionalism.
David Weinberger (1950-), Canadian author; on the pleasure people get in pointing out the errors and goofs of the famous, as discovered in movies, articles, books.
That’s it? That’s the cleverest, pithiest, zing-iest thing I ever wrote? I don’t even know what that has to do with professionalism and I wrote the damn sentence.
BTW, I am not a Canadian author. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Not only that, but they got your age wrong; surely you’re not a day over forty!
For reasons I prefer not to explore, I pass the time by using Google’s translation service to translate important pithy sayings into german, then the result into french then that result back to english. Your quote then becomes:
“We receive to take a step the teeth in the idealised and narrowed sentence behaviour which as professionalism is known ”
which sounds even more profound.
Similarly,
Look before you leap! becomes
Look at, before you do not jump!
What goes around comes around becomes
What walks, circulates.
Still looking for a really funny one of course.
Dana’s Law of Laptops — from the 1980s.
“An ounce on the desk is a pound in my hand.”