Quote unquote

I was schmoozing at a social event recently (something I don't do much of and am never drunk enough to do successfully) when I was introduced to a woman with 'This is Jonathan... Baldwin'

'Oh,' she says. 'The Jonathan Baldwin?'

'Er,' I say, slowly, 'yes...'

'Oh I just quoted you in a paper I wrote'.

It appears she quoted something I'd written in Visual Communication which impressed me greatly - not least because it hasn't actually been published yet... I meant to find out how she'd got hold of it but never mind.

I was reminded of the incident today when reading this discussion over at Speak Up. Worth checking out - some great pithy quotes that mostly serve to demolish the idea that design is about being clever. I might nick some of them for the book ;-)

But what hit me most was the comment by David Weinberger that 'Just because you happen to know a quote and like a quote, doesn’t mean that the quote is an absolute truth.' This is something I agree with wholeheartedly, but it never goes away - bad enough in student essays 'Neville Brody said...', 'Milton Glaser said...' so therefore it must be true; but even worse when it turns up in meetings between professionals and academics.
And it's the whole thing of 'I know a quote therefore I'm clever' and the way people chuckle knowingly when I suspect that they're mostly like me, completely oblivious of the quotation but unable to admit that an idea may be worth thinking about even if there's no pithy little comment from someone famous-for-nothing-but-being-quoted to back it up.

I'm crap at remembering quotations. Even my own.

I think if I had to give students two secrets to success it would be these: learn to play golf, and learn some quotations you can drag out to excuse yourself in any situation.

Oh, and learn to laugh knowingly even when you haven't a clue what's just been said.

I know that's three secrets. I just can't be bothered to go back and change what I wrote...