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Fred Shapiro's Quotations of the Year 2010

It’s that time of year again. Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, has released his top quotations of 2010. At the top of the list is Christine O’Donnell’s TV ad where she proclaimed, “I’m not a witch,” tied with BP CEO, Tony Hayward’s “I’d like my life back.” What a gift to us all. 

Looking back at the year in quotations

Each year, Fred Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, compiles a list of memorable quotations from the past twelve months. An entertaining mix of political missteps, slick advertising lingo, and plain old nonsense, his 2009 list adds some levity and perspective to the year in review.

Recently, Shapiro spoke to NPR's Robert Siegel about the business of selecting the year's most memorable quips and indicated the apparent difficulty of finding eloquence amid the hubbub:

SHAPIRO: I mean, I have to say, having really studied this, there are no Shakespeares or Lincolns out there, that the kinds of quotes we get nowadays are entirely different in nature. You know, maybe there are eloquent, inspiring quotes out there, but it would just take a while for us to realize it.

SIEGEL: But it isn't for lack of politicians giving set-piece speeches and trying to sum up their ideas very eloquently. That's a very common event.

SHAPIRO: Well, it is a common event - although, I guess, one surprise of the year was that Barack Obama - a very intelligent, eloquent person - in his speeches did not really try for the rhetorical heights. He really, I think, made a conscious decision to go for substance rather than style. And I don't believe that were any future famous lines coming out of his inaugural address.

Think that Shapiro missed one of the year's best lines? Submit your suggestions in the comments or at QuotationDictionary.com, and be sure to follow @YaleQuotations on Twitter for your daily dose of eloquence.

Fred Shapiro's Notable Quotations of 2008

Yale Book of Quotations author Fred R. Shapiro has selected his list of the Most Notable Quotations of 2008. Which one will you remember most?

1. "I can see Russia from my house!" — Sarah Palin on her foreign-policy credentials, as satirized by Tina Fey, NBC "Saturday Night Live" broadcast, Sept. 13, 2008

2. "All of them, any of them that have been in front of me over all these years." — Sarah Palin responding to Katie Couric's asking her to specifically name newspapers or magazines she reads, CBS News interview, Oct. 1, 2008

3. "We have sort of become a nation of whiners." — Phil Gramm on Americans concerned about the economy, quoted in Washington Times, July 10, 2008

4. "It's not based on any particular data point, we just wanted to choose a really large number." — Treasury spokeswoman explaining how the $700 billion number was chosen for the initial bailout, quoted on Forbes.com, Sept. 23, 2008

5. "The fundamentals of America's economy are strong." — John McCain, interview with Peter Cook on Bloomberg TV, Apr. 17, 2008

6. "Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency." — Department of the Treasury's proposed Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, Sept. 2008

7. "Maybe 100." — John McCain on how many years U.S. troops could remain in Iraq, response at town hall meeting, Derry, N.H., Jan. 3, 2008

8. "I'll see you at the debates, bitches." — Paris Hilton, video responding to John McCain ad attacking Barack Obama as a celebrity, Aug. 2008

9. "At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he [Barack Obama] says we only have one president at a time. I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have." — Barney Frank, remark to consumer advocates, Dec. 4, 2008

10. (tie) "Cash for trash." — Paul Krugman on the financial bailout, New York Times, Sept. 22, 2008

10. (tie) *CORRECTION* "They say 'there are no atheists in foxholes.'  Perhaps, then, there are also no libertarians in crises." — Jeffrey Frankel, Cato Journal, Spring/Summer 2007

WSJ names Yale Book of Quotations an "essential" reference

This weekend’s Wall Street Journal added additional acclaim to the long list of praise for Fred Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations. In his list of essential reference books for the home library, Boston University librarian Donald Altschiller ranked the Yale Book of Quotations as second only to the World Almanac and Book of Facts. The Almanac may have the edge in sheer data, but Altschiller notes that Shapiro’s novel approach has used electronic databases to unearth the true sources of many misattributed quotations, a fine fact-finding mission itself.

For more on the Yale Book of Quotations, check out the book’s homepage where you can view some entertaining quotations or, if you like, submit your own. This election season has already produced some excellent material for future editions. Who knows? Perhaps Mr. Shapiro can tell us who truly first put lipstick on a pig.

Yale Press authors on nuclear war and black holes

Foreign Affairs, published by the Council of Foreign Relations, asked Lawrence Freedman to choose his five favorite books of the past year about military, science, and technology. He chose Foxbats over Dimona: The Soviets' Nuclear Gamble in the Six-Day War, by Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez as one of the year's best books. Read the entire list here.

This groundbreaking history shatters many assumptions about the Six-Day War of 1967. New research in Soviet archives and testimonies from participants in the Israeli/Egyptian conflict reveal the extent of the Kremlin’s involvement, plans for the use of nuclear weapons in the Mid-East, and willingness to precipitate a global crisis.

Click here to listen to an interview with Isabella Ginor and Gideon Remez on the Yale Press Podcast.

And Fred R. Shapiro, editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, corrected the Times on the history of the term "black hole." Read his explanation on the Times Online.

Click here to listen to an interview with Fred Shapiro on the Yale Press Podcast.

Shapiro blegs for the Freakonomics blog

Stephen J. Dubner of the New York Times' Freakonomics blog invited "blegs" from the readers--or, "questions that the Freakonomics readership could collectively answer well." The inaugural bleg--did Clint Eastwood's ever say "Read my lips"--was answered with the help of Yale Press' own Fred R. Shapiro, editor of the "wonderful" Yale Book of Quotations. Shapiro began by explaining the methodology of his work.

“Quotations research” is probably a new concept to most readers, but I have become one of the few people in the world who conducts extensive research about famous quotations. Even standard quotation books like Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations are based on surprisingly minimal research, but I set out eight years ago to create a new quotation book that would use state-of-the-art research methods — as well as extensive networking — to track down the accurate origins of well-known quotes.

Check back on the Freakonomics blog every Thursday to see Shapiro's future blegs.

This reader-friendly quotation book is unique in its focus on modern and American quotations.  It is also the first to use state-of-the-art research methods to capture famous quotations and to trace sources of quotations to their true origins.  It contains more than 12,000 entries not only from literary and historical sources but also from popular culture, sports, computers, politics, law, and the social sciences. With fascinating annotations, extensive cross-references, and a large keyword index, the book is a curious reader's delight.

Read the rest of the blog post, including a lively conversation in the comments section.

Choice annual list includes 26 Yale Press books

A publication of the Association of College & Research Libraries, Choice, recently announced its list of the Outstanding Academic Titles of 2007. This list, released on January 1, "reflects the best titles reviewed by Choice in 2007 and brings with it the extraordinary recognition of the academic library community." Yale University Press appears on this prestigious list 26 times among the 646 titles in 54 disciplines and subsections. Here is a list of the titles chosen from Yale Press:

John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty, by Arthur H. Cash

Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, and the Renaissance of Venetian Painting, by David Alan Brown and Sylvia Ferino-Pagden

Britannia and Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars, by Natalya Abramova and Irina Zagarodnaya

On Political Equality, by Robert A. Dahl

Art in the Making: Rembrandt, by David Bomford, Jo Kirby, Ashok Roy, Axel Rüger, and Raymond White

Caesar: Life of a Colossus, by Adrian Goldsworthy

The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible, by Allen Dwight Callahan

The Yale Book of Quotations, ed. by Fred R. Shapiro

Fred Shapiro names year's top 10 quotes

As 2008 approaches, Fred R. Shapiro, the editor of The Yale Book of Quotations, looked back on all of the quotes, soundbytes, and catchphrases that made an impact in 2007. Now, Shapiro has prepared a top ten list of the most memorable quotes, Reuters reports.

Shapiro's number one for 2007 was "Don't tase me, bro!" from University of Florida student Andrew Meyer. According to Reuters, Shapiro sees this quote as "a symbol of pop culture success. Within two days it was one of the most popular phrases on Google and one of the most viewed videos. It also showed up on ringtones and T-shirts."

Shapiro's list was also featured on NBC's TODAY show. On Meyer's quote, Shapiro told MSNBC, "It's not Shakespeare, but there is a kind of folk eloquence in that. It wouldn't be a quote if he didn't say 'bro'.... That had just the right rhythm to make it memorable."

To read Reuter's article on the entire list, click here. To see TODAY's segment on it, launch the video found here.

This reader-friendly quotation book is unique in its focus on modern and American quotations.  It is also the first to use state-of-the-art research methods to capture famous quotations and to trace sources of quotations to their true origins.  It contains more than 12,000 entries not only from literary and historical sources but also from popular culture, sports, computers, politics, law, and the social sciences. With fascinating annotations, extensive cross-references, and a large keyword index, the book is a curious reader's delight.

Read an excerpt from the book, or listen to an interview with Fred Shapiro on the Yale Press Podcast.

Book Review Call for Quotation Submissions

This weekend's New York Times Book Review devoted the "TBR: Inside the List" column to discussing The Yale Book of Quotations, specifically the relative dearth of quotations from recent literature. Dwight Garner says, "A lot's been written already – most of it deservedly positive – about the new 'Yale Book of Quotations,' edited by Fred R. Shapiro. It's an attractive book: clean, tart, concise. And Shapiro's got a nice eye for recent bits of pop flotsam." Garner invites readers to send in their favorite short fiction and non-fiction quotations from writers born in 1950 or later to quotes@nytimes.com.

If enough contributions are sent in, the Book Review will print the best on the back page of a forthcoming issue.

Most Quoted Authors in Yale Book of Quotations

Posted by Fred R. Shapiro, Editor of The Yale Book of Quotations:

I am often asked about who are the most-quoted authors in The Yale Book of Quotations.  The first two are, unsurprisingly:

• William Shakespeare . . . 455 quotations
• Bible . . . 400

The next two on the list are less conventional for quotation dictionaries:

• Mark Twain . . . 153
• Ambrose Bierce . . . 144

The high ranking of these two suggests the American and, perhaps, iconoclastic emphases of the book.

Where I diverged even further from the "most-quoted" rankings in the standard quotation dictionaries is in the representation of modern figures, such as the following:

• Winston Churchill . . . 55
• F. Scott Fitzgerald . . . 52
• Groucho Marx . . . 51
• George Orwell . . . 51
• Dorothy Parker . . . 49
• H. L. Mencken . . . 46
• W. H. Auden . . . 44
• Woody Allen . . . 43
• John F. Kennedy . . . 41
• John Lennon/Paul McCartney . . . 39
• Albert Einstein . . . 38
• Ernest Hemingway . . . 36
• Franklin D. Roosevelt . . . 35
• Ezra Pound . . . 30
• W. C. Fields . . . 29
• James Joyce . . . 29
• Bob Dylan . . . 27
• Oscar Hammerstein II . . . 27
• Robert Frost . . . 26
• Cole Porter . . . 26
• Mae West . . . 24
• Sigmund Freud . . . 24
• George W. Bush . . . 23
• Richard M. Nixon . . . 22
• Dylan Thomas . . . 22
• Martin Luther King, Jr. . . . 21
• Virginia Woolf . . . 21
• George H. W. Bush . . . 20
• e. e. cummings . . . 20
• Ronald W. Reagan . . . 20