A small group of historical figures can be quoted on almost any subject. Their advantage is partly volume: they wrote so much that later readers can usually find a line with a tangential link to a new argument. It is also linguistic and archival, because their work was published in English or translated promptly, widening access and reuse. A durable quotation must be specific enough to suggest a connection but vague enough to travel beyond its original setting, a useful caution against treating familiar words as self-explanatory evidence.
Notable Point · 2:27:15-2:29:48
Why a few historical figures supply quotations for every subject
Prolific publication, early English translation, and adaptable phrasing make Churchill, Marx, Engels, and Theodore Roosevelt unusually reusable sources of quotations.