To Use or Not To Use: Quotes in Speeches and Books

We all have it—a pile of notable quotes we like that we want to use in a book or a speech someday. We collect quotes like beach glass, our little gems. Mine seem to be on neon-colored Post-its strewn about my desk. Yours may be in a notebook, or stored tidily in an app. 

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If you’re like many of the authors and speakers we work with at HEROIC, the confusion sets in when you try to find a place for your favorite quotes in your book or speech. You wonder:

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Should I open with a quote? Could I close with it?  

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Can I use quotes many people have heard before? 

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How do I properly attribute my quotes?  

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And so on.

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These are all important questions, and you’ll find good, practical answers for all of them with a simple Google search. 

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So why, after you follow that good, practical advice, are you still unsure if you are using quotes in your books or speeches effectively? Should you cut some of them? Should you move them? Do you need them at all?

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This confusion is rooted in the type of questions you are asking. Rather than solely focus on “how,” ask yourself “why.”

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Why does this quote matter to me?

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You may like the sound of a quote. But why does it matter to you? 

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If you pluck a quote you love from your collection and then aren’t sure where to place it in your book or speech, it may be because you haven’t connected that quote to your own journey. 

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For example, here’s a quote from a speech the late Senator Paul Wellstone, one of my heroes, gave in 1999 to the Sheet Metal Workers Union: “We all do better when we all do better.”

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The conventional way to introduce that quote would be as simple as, “Paul Wellstone once said…” or “I love this quote from Paul Wellstone…”

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Except, without context, the quote just sits there. If I don’t have that context, it’s harder for me to find a place for it in my speech. It’s true that I love that quote, but why is it meaningful to me? What’s the story behind it? 

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Here’s how I would add meaning to that quote, if I were sharing it in my own book or speech:

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“One of my heroes was the late Paul Wellstone, a senator from my home state of Minnesota. I admired him for his tireless work for workers, for economic justice, for human rights, and for peace. 

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“Wellstone died in a plane crash just a few weeks before the election. At the time, I worked across the street from his campaign office in St. Paul. I remember looking out the window as his staff wandered out onto the sidewalk. They seemed to be looking up at the sky, as if they might see him there, even though the plane crashed hundreds of miles away.

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“Later that day, I crossed the street to look at the flowers and messages that had accumulated alongside the sidewalk outside the campaign office. On the ground, I found one of his green campaign buttons. It read: ‘We all do better when we all do better.’ It’s a famous Wellstone quote. I’d heard it many times before. But somehow, finding it on the ground that day felt like a sign. As though I had found a life’s motto, a worldview I could adopt as my own.”

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In the larger context of why that Wellstone quote is important to me, it’s easier for me to find a place for it. It’s also easier for me to determine if it belongs in my book or speech at all. Maybe that quote is lovely, and important, and inspirational, but it just doesn’t fit. 

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Exploring the meaning behind why this or that quote matters to you will help you determine if it stays or goes. And if you simply like the sound of a quote, but you don’t have a deeper connection to it, it likely doesn’t belong in that piece at all. 

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Explaining why a quote matters to you also helps your audience connect to the quote—and to you.