Daniel R. Coates Quotes

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.

Journalists have misquoted people for so long–and quoted them out of context–that many people like to have their words on record [in writing]. I don’t want someone taking half a sentence or paraphrasing me… Just too much risk.

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

I will not be misquoted!

There are some people in this world who always turn and twist the spoken word out of proportion.

I hate seeing myself misquoted.

I don't mind being asked anything! Not at all. I tell you what is annoying, is when you say something and somebody writes something that's completely different to what you said, and you're like, 'well that's not nice, because that's not what happened.'

People are always misquoting me.

Taken out of context I must seem so strange.

With no more than six levels of misquotation, any statement can be made to say whatever you wish.

Sure, I've often been misrepresented - anyone frequently quoted has this experience.

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.

When distant and unfamiliar and complex things are communicated to great masses of people, the truth suffers a considerable and often a radical distortion.

You could put it that way if you wanted to cause people concern. On the other hand, you could report it as I said it.

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.

Be careful -- with quotations, you can damn anything.

It is better not to express what one means than to express what one does not mean.

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

The problem with merely writing so that you can be understood is that the wrong people, in advancing their agendas, are only too ready to misunderstand you. Writing so that you cannot be misunderstood anticipates and preempts those who would willfully distort what you are trying to say.

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

For years, I've been interviewed, and they write what they thought I thought or what they thought I said. Sometimes it's accurate, and often it isn't.

Scientifically speaking, if I say something, or it gets misquoted, or people put a spin on it... I mean, are you interested, really, in what people are saying?

I'm so used to being misunderstood.

I tend to thrive on being misquoted. It's the only way I sound good.

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.