Simeon Strunsky Quotes

The biggest problem I have in journalism is being quoted or misquoted and then being asked to defend something I haven't said.

I improve on misquotation.

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.

I don't want someone taking half a sentence or paraphrasing me... Just too much risk.

Quotation, n: The act of repeating erroneously the words of another.

When you take somebody's quote out of context, which happens all the time, nobody's ever going to go and do the research on their own and figure out that you got it wrong.

The only thing that I react really violently to is being misquoted.

Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted.

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.

What makes me furious, not just because we're in an interview, but I don't like when writers take your words and put them somewhere else, in the wrong context in their own article about you.

He said true things, but called them by wrong names.

I rarely find that things put in quotes, attributed to me, are things that I said -certainly in the context in which they are presented.

It is an occupational hazard to be quoted out of context.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanation.

In the world of speeches and orations, especially historical ones, the persistent misquotation is understandable. You hear a speech. You misremember or mishear a line as something more colorful than it was.

I hate seeing myself misquoted.

Misquotation is the pride and privilege of the learned.

The little honesty that exists among authors is discernible in the unconscionable way they misquote from the writings of others.

Quotations are powerful tools. Michel de Montaigne, the father of all essayists, observed, 'I quote others only to better express myself.' Intrepid quotations detective Ralph Keyes helps us to discover the clear truth about exactly what was said and who exactly said it.

The most familiar quotations are the most likely to be misquoted. Some misquotations are still variable, some have settled down to false versions that have obscured the true ones. They have passed over from literature into speech.

If you're not comparing apples to apples, it doesn't matter.

Long shots almost always miss the mark.

Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

we have not been impressed with any attribute of the Senate other than its appearance and manners. We have heard the best speakers: they all fire off speeches which deal with the entire subject in general terms and which do not attempt to debate, to answer opponents' arguments or offer new points for discussion. And the speeches are constantly degenerating into empty rhetoric; they abound in quotations from well-known authors or from their own former speeches.

But accuracy means something to me. It's vital to my sense of values. I've learned not to trust people who are inaccurate. Every aviator knows that if mechanics are inaccurate. aircraft crash.