Nigel Rees Quotes

4 Sourced Quotes

My toils in the quotation field have led me to formulate two or three laws about the way people use and abuse quotations. My first law is: When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to Bernard Shaw – which I don't mean to be taken literally, but as a general observation of the habit people have of attaching remarks to the nearest obvious speaker. Churchill, Wilde, Orson Welles and Alexander Woollcott are other useful figures upon whom to father remarks when you don't know who really said them.

Nigel Rees

When in doubt, ascribe all quotations to George Bernard Shaw.

Nigel Rees

An analogous process I shall call Churchillian Drift... Whereas quotations with an apothegmatic feel are normally ascribed to Shaw, those with a more grandiose or belligerent tone are, as if by osmosis, credited to Churchill. All humorous remarks obviously made by a female originated, of course, with Dorothy Parker. All quotations in translation, on the other hand, should be attributed to Goethe (with 'I think' obligatory).

Nigel Rees

I am only too aware that I am open to Rees's Second Law of Quotation: "However sure you are that you have attributed a quotation correctly, an earlier source will be pointed out to you."

Nigel Rees

Nigel Rees

Nigel Rees

Creative Commons

Born: June 5, 1944 (age 82)

Bio: Nigel Rees is an English writer and broadcaster, best known for devising and hosting the long-running Radio 4 panel game Quote... Unquote and as the author of more than fifty books mostly works of reference on language, and humour in language.

Known for:

Brewer's Famous Quotations (2006)
Graffiti Lives, O.K. (1979)

Nigel Rees on Wikipedia

Suggest an edit or a new quote

British Broadcaster Quotes

Broadcaster Quotes

20th-century Broadcaster Quotes