How to use quotes

When you are looking for someone to quote, you want to be certain the one you select will be familiar to your audience. You might find a wonderful quote by Joe MacSnerd, but if the people in your audience have never heard of MacSnerd, the quote won't do much for your credibility. Of course, you can always tell your audience who MacSnerd is, but that can be awkward. Better leave him to wallow in obscurity.

On the other hand, don't carry familiarity so far that you select tired old quotes that have been used over and over. With all the thousands available, you should, without too much effort, be able to come up with a reasonably fresh one.

Sometimes you can find a new twist or a new wrinkle for an overused quote. For example, this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, has had more than its share of exposure in one form or another:

If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, tho' he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

I once used it this way in a speech for a marketing executive:

Emerson said that if you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door . . . or words to that effect. That's only half true. If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door—if the world knows about it. That's what marketing is all about. Telling the world about our mousetrap. It's not enough to have a good product and good service, we have to let our potential customers know it.

I thought that use was sufficiently different to justify giving Emerson's mousetrap metaphor another turn in the spotlight.

Some speakers seem to have trouble getting into a quote. Resist the temptation to say things like ''I believe it was Emerson who said . . .'' And avoid the expression ''quote unquote.'' The best way to let the audience know when the quote begins and ends is to use pauses and a different tone of voice. Be certain the audience knows when the quote ends and when the speaker resumes. Some speakers who use reading glasses will put them on when they begin a quote and remove them when they end it. This is effective even when the speaker doesn't really need the specs to read. Another good device is to pick up the paper you're reading from and let the audience see that you're reading. Either of these devices works well and might even add credibility.

Ronald Reagan often used quotes in his speeches. Speaking to students at Oxford University, December 4, 1992, he quoted Winston Churchill:

At the height of World War II, Sir Winston Churchill reminded Britons that, ''These are not dark days; these are great days—the greatest days our history has ever lived; and we must thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.''

You can be sure that Reagan did not say, ''At the height of World War II, Sir Winston Churchill reminded Britons that, and I quote . . .'' No doubt he accomplished the same purpose by a slight pause and a slight change of tone.

The most important thing to remember about using quotations effectively is that a quotation should lead smoothly and logically into a point that you want to make. Resist the temptation to twist your thoughts around to accommodate a quote that you happen to like. And, of course, the tie-in to the subject must be made clear quickly. Otherwise, your audience will be thinking, Okay, so what's the point?

And, by the way, don't make your quotation too long. The audience might have trouble following it. If the quote you want to use seems too long, use part of it verbatim and paraphrase or summarize the rest.

Let's examine some different ways in which quotations have been used in speeches. In each example, note how the quotation ties in with the subject of the speech or the point the speaker wants to make. Our first example is from a speech by a business executive to a Kiwanis Club. He quotes the great American philosopher Charlie Brown, of the ''Peanuts'' comic strip:

Whenever I speak to a service club I'm reminded of a ''Peanuts'' comic strip that appeared several years ago. In the first panel of the strip, good old Charlie Brown is on the pitcher's mound. He is saying to himself, ''It's the last of the ninth. The bases are loaded. There are two outs and the count is three balls and two strikes on the batter.''

The second panel shows one of those ''meetings on the mound'' that baseball is famous for. Charlie is surrounded by his teammates, who are shouting, ''Throw him a fastball, Charlie Brown.'' ''Throw him a curve.'' And so on.

In the last panel, there is Charlie Brown, all alone on the mound, knowing that he's the guy who holds the game in the palm of his hand, knowing that it's his game to win or lose. He is saying to himself, ''The world is filled with people who are anxious to serve in an advisory capacity.''

The speaker uses the quote as a lead-in to compliment the Kiwanians:

What I like about the Kiwanis and other service clubs is that you're willing to do a lot more than just serve in an advisory capacity. You go out and make things happen in this community and this nation. You know that the ball game is in your hands.

In the next example, the speaker uses a quotation from a well-known literary classic to draw a vivid analogy:

Dr. Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley's famous novel, described his first look at his creation this way: ''I beheld the wretch— the monster whom I had created.'' Today we can look at our national healthcare system in much the same way—a monster, dangerous, out of control, a creature of our own making. And like Dr. Frankenstein's monster, our monster is a product of good intentions. Yet it has the potential to destroy us.

Speakers often quote from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and many of the best-known lines from that classic are overused. Here is an example of one that has not been overused. The speaker uses it effectively to lead into the subject:

You're familiar with the story of Alice in Wonderland. And you may recall after falling down that fateful hole, Alice encountered a large blue caterpillar who, upon seeing her, inquired, ''Who are you?''

To which Alice replied, rather shyly, ''I-I hardly know, sir, just at present—at least I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.''

Our business has changed so rapidly that sometimes we're like Alice. We hardly know who we are just at present.

A corporate executive speaking about the National Alliance of Business, an organization that works to secure pledges of privatesector jobs and training for the disadvantaged, reached back in memory for the words of an old song:

You read the morning paper from the front to the back, But every job that's open needs a man with a knack. So put it right back in the rack, Jack.

The executive ties the song to the subject neatly:

That old song pretty well expresses the frustration that some men and women might feel when they can't get a job because they have no experience and can't get experience because no one will hire them without experience.

An executive of one of the Big-3 automakers used a profound quotation from George Bernard Shaw to open a speech to the Michigan Freedom Foundation. He preserves the drama of the opening by beginning with the quotation—no preliminaries:

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.'' Good morning. Those were the words of the famous British writer George Bernard Shaw. This morning I want to ask you to be unreasonable people.

The speaker follows the opening with an inspirational story about Vic Wertz, a pro baseball player whom he called ''an unreasonable man'' because he returned to his career after fighting polio.

Sometimes it's effective to make a point first, then use a quotation to support it. Here, for example, is an excerpt from a speech on the importance of research and development, delivered by an executive of General Electric:

You want to invent and develop the best technology, to hone, to refine, to improve. But you also want to get into production fast, to get to market fast. The Japanese have resolved this conflict by moving rapidly into markets with adequate, but not forefront, technology, while we take time to perfect a more advanced technology. They've been tremendously successful with this old, but effective, strategy, which can be traced back at least to the British radar pioneer of the 1930s, Sir Robert Watson Watt, who expressed it this way: ''Give me the third best technology. The second best won't be ready in time. The best will never be ready.''

A speech I wrote some years ago for a bank executive makes good use of a quotation from the late Dean Rusk, as reported in Reader's Digest:

A couple of years ago, Reader's Digest published an anecdote about a speech to the graduating class at the University of Southern California by Dean Rusk, who was Secretary of State under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson and who is now a highly respected professor of International Law and Diplomacy at the University of Georgia. Mr. Rusk told the USC graduates that they should be grateful to members of past generations. ''They have gone to special pains,'' he said, ''to save some interesting problems for you to solve.''

Well, after I have finished my speech, you'll have reason to be grateful to me, because I have no intention of solving all your interesting problems.