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Quoting "Great Minds"

Who Decides Who's Quoteworthy?

By Chris Dunmire

“Yes. That’s what creativity is. More than one right answer.” — Quinn McDonald, Artist and Creativity Coach

Two days after Thanksgiving in the middle of a road trip I found myself inside of a Pennsylvania library browsing through a small shelf of books for sale. Earlier that morning I had a craving for reading, and the motel’s copy of the Gideon Bible inspired me with a Proverbial thought, a Revelation, if you will. Go find the nearest public library and buy a used book.

Standing before the selection of books, one in particular caught my eye. A large, green poofy-covered volume stood tall amongst the rest of the books. As I pulled it from the shelf, I found the embossed gold-lettering on the front cover intriguing. Inside of a classy double-lined square border the title gleamed with a decades-worn dullness:

THE TREASURE CHEST
Classics Edition

I quickly opened the book to the title page which encapsulated the book’s theme in a 19-word tagline:

A Heritage Album Containing 1064 Familiar and Inspirational
Quotations, Poems, Sentiments, and Prayers
From Great Minds of 2500 Years

The book was edited by Charles L. Wallace and published in 1965. A treasure chest? I’ve struck good-reading gold! I smiled to myself and carried the 41-year-old book to the front desk where the librarian charged me three dollars for it. I spent the rest of the day sampling bits of wisdom from “Great Minds” like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Emily Dickinson, and Abraham Lincoln.

On Second Thought…

After coming home from my Pennsylvania trip, I placed the big green book on my dresser where it sat untouched for several weeks. One night I picked it up and part of the spine came loose when I opened the front cover. I set the book aside intending to glue the spine later, but came back to it the next day finding a piece of clear tape holding the loose spine in place. My husband, the brilliant problem-solver in the house, found my loose-spined green book and mended it for me.

It’s funny how a writer gets inspired. I took one look at my newly-mended book and a flood of thoughts challenging the idea of “Great Minds” began to surface. It went something like this:

Great Minds? Who decides who has a great mind?

Great Minds? These are all famous dead people who expressed personal insights built upon other people’s personal insights.

Who decides if or when a person is quoteworthy?

Do thought-provoking expressions make a Great quoteworthy Mind?

If so, I know of thousands of Great Minds whose words will never be compiled in a big green poofy-covered gold-embossed treasure book for others to read decades, years, or even weeks later.

It was at that moment that I knew I had to write about the injustice of Quote-Worthiness in our society. Ninety-nine percent of the John and Jane Nobody’s in the world who say useful, profound, and thought-provoking things will never be quoted. Why? Because of the assumption that only famous, rich, or extremely brilliant people say things that are worthy enough to be quoted — and for that matter, written about in a book. Undoubtedly, it has something to do with brand recognition, too.

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