Don't Try To Be Quoted

I talked almost 2 years ago about unquotable quotes. There, I explained that plenty of brilliant things are thought of and shared to a small number of people, but are never realized to their fullest potential. As such, you can amass a substantial collection of ideas just by realizing how much gold falls out of people's mouths.

I want to pull a particular story from that post. In fact, it's the first paragraph. Every now and then, people will come up to me and say, "I 've been thinking about what you said the other day." I always tell them the same thing: "What did I say?"

I do have a number of quotes. I don't really think of them as quotes, but they are things I often say. Usually, they are a primary principle, like "total and complete honesty leads to true happiness." I say it often, but it never quite sticks. I think that part of the reason is that it requires further explanation to fully grasp what it means.

However, when I'm talking about the subject, it is some off-the-cuff comment I make that always seems to sink in. Granted, when I said, "putting whipped cream on a cyanide pill doesn't make you not die", it was pretty funny. And it was relevant to the conversation at hand. But I did not come up with it to get quoted. I made it up to add to a conversation.

And therein lies the point. Don't try to be quoted. Try to say something useful. Let other people decide whether it's worth quoting.