Say what you will

I'm a big fan of making up quotes. Not of attributing statements to real people who didn't say them, but of writing a quote myself and giving it a fictional source.

I read The Sun magazine (not the British tabloid, but rather a monthly literary magazine for the liberal and, apparently, cancer-prone demographic) and the back of every issue has a page of quotes by famous people. They call them Sunbeams. Awww.

After reading these every month for the past few years, it dawned on me that a lot of quotes are only considered great because of the person who said them.

If the guy behind the counter at Arby's said to you one day, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," and no one had said that before, you wouldn't be blown away would you?

You'd just be thinking, "That's great, guy from Ukraine, where's mah Big Montana?" Or you might even be a little scared. Nothing to fear but fear itself? That's borderline serial killer talk.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Jeffrey Dahmer (1992)

That changes the whole feeling. Or how about:

Time is the inconvenience we live by.
Richard P. Fawles, 1st President of Harvard (1821)

I made that up. There's no Richard P. Fawles; the first president of Harvard was Henry Dunster, and that was in the mid-17th century. And a quick Google search of that quote tells me it's never been said before in history.

But it seems quotable enough; takes on a big theme and boils it down to a pithy little saying. It also makes sense, but not too much sense. And it can be used as an excuse, which is one of the best things about quotes.

Without any sort of supporting argument you can use quotes to defend all sorts of mistakes and lapses in judgement. The biggest fuck-ups you'll ever meet have a quote for every situation. No, wait:

The biggest fuck-ups you'll ever meet have a quote for every situation.
Maurice Bertrand-Dechevaux in Boulets et Poulets (1976)