Dartblog

One curious thing about the internet is what it has done for famous quotations. Bad, bad things. Classical music lovers who also happen to be savvy on the world wide web (Hey, Dan.) know that, if ever looking for a quick-and-dirty MP3 rip-off of a recorded classical album for auditioning purposes, an internet search for the classical piece in question will rather consistently yield results. Except each will, pursuant to the file name, purport to have been recorded by either the Boston Pops, the London Symphony Orchestra, or the New York Philharmonic. That’s right: every piece of classical music ever put on tape has been played by either one of three orchestras, and they happen to be the stalwarts of three of the world’s biggest music towns.

That, of course, is not true. The LSO has a storied and continually growing library of recorded music, but one doesn’t hear much on compact disc from the Pops or the Philharmonic anymore. But those three orchestras have the greatest brand recognition in the world, and the internet denizens who take these discs, rip them into MP3 format, and place them on the internet just assume that one of those three orchestras is playing the piece. As the same files get passed and traded around, the filenames confound further. Scientists project that by the year 2011, every classical music file on the internet will be named: “London Symphony Orchestra - Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.mp3” regardless of what piece or which ensemble is actually contained in the recording itself.

The same thing, tragically, happens to quotations. Good quotes are hard to come by. Bartleby’s is the best spot on the internet to find reliably thoughtful quotes with proper attribution. But sundry other quote sites are simply useless. In August, I debunked one of the most popular ones, which became very popular in conservative circles. “You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong,” Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have said. He did not.

Mistakes in attribution get repeated and, for their ugly form, proper attributional paragraphs get whittled down to nothing but the name of the man himself. It is a sad state of affairs. I thought to compose this small warning when I read this funny post on Scott Adams’ blog. In it, the Dilbert cartoonist, who takes a strong pragmatic view on coercive interrogation, defends his argument by pointing out that the Founding Father Fealty his critics express (All the way to the “George Washington would never have made Osama bin Laden feel one whit uncomfortable just to prevent September 11th” cliff) is belied by some other questionable ideals held by those sires. Slavery, land ownership, limited franchise, inter alia. One of his commenters, approving and elaborating on Adams’ point that the early notion of land ownership as a prerequisite for civil liberties was ridiculous, inserted this delightful Theodore Roosevelt quote:

The Roman Republic fell, not because of the ambition of Caesar or Augustus, but because it had already long ceased to be in any real sense a republic at all. When the sturdy Roman plebeian, who lived by his own labor, who voted without reward according to his own convictions, and who with his fellows formed in war the terrible Roman legion, had been changed into an idle creature who craved nothing in life save the gratification of a thirst for vapid excitement, who was fed by the state, and who directly or indirectly sold his vote to the highest bidder, then the end of the republic was at hand, and nothing could save it. The laws were the same as they had been, but the people behind the laws had changed, and so the laws counted for nothing.

I think that’s lovely. But the commenter provides no link and no source. Here is one other site that uses the quote—a property rights advocacy group. Good mission; questionable veracity. And even there no source or date is stamped below the quote. So perhaps I’ll never know if Roosevelt said what the commenter said he said. I take it all with a grain of salt.