The Problem with Old Sayings and Popular Quotes

These days, I cannot help but sneer when someone merely quotes a famous person or a maxim to drive a point home or to justify their actions. Come to think of it, there is an aphorism or a quotation endorsing practically everything under the sun.

So, while we have someone asserting that "modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out", there is another intellectual who believes that "modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates; he who undervalues himself is justly overvalued by others".

Likewise, they say “Try, try, until you succeed”; though, we all know how it is sometimes best to let go and move on in life.

The other day, when a fellow student asked the teacher about the ‘long-run’ implication of an economic policy, all she could come up with as a reply was a quote by the great economist, Keynes -“It is only the short-run that matters; in the long run we are all dead.” Now, how insightful is that!

More often than not, old sayings are overly simplifying and just add an element of drama to the given situation, rather than actually resolving one’s dilemma. People need to realise that the world has transformed appreciably since these were conceived and that they no longer hold good.

Popular quotes are not a panacea for all of life’s problems, and certainly not an acceptable excuse for dodging genuine questions by students!