Quoting out of context

An out of context quotation is a kind of discrediting attack which appears to use a person's own words against him, but is deceptive because the apparent meaning of the quoted words—even though they are accurately quoted—is different from the meaning of the longer passage from which the words were taken. Out of context quotations can also be used to promote ideas, but ultimately lead to the diminishing of the original work. To illustrate:

One Gilson Gardner wrote:

"It is silly to say that the moon is made of green cheese."

One could quote this out of context as:

"...the moon is made of green cheese."—Gilson Gardner

These are certainly Gilson Gardner's exact words, and just as certainly they distort Gilson Gardner's intended meaning.

Real examples almost as extreme as this can be found in movie and book advertisements, which find ingenious ways of extracting seemingly positive snippets from overwhelmingly negative reviews. For example, an advertisement for the film Be Cool quoted:

"...Travolta is as smooth as ever..." —Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

The actual review said:

"[John Travolta's character Chili] Palmer is back in 'Be Cool,' and although Travolta is as smooth as ever, the picture is a bust, a grimly unfunny comedy with no connection to reality, and worst of all, running on and on for two dismal hours."

Here is a subtle example.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" wrote the Romantic poet John Keats in "Ode on a Grecian Urn." That famous citation, which expresses 19th-century Romanticism's trust in feeling over reason, is pertinent in the case of Anne Carson's newest volume...

What could possibly be misleading in this reviewer's quotation of what is probably the most famous line Keats ever wrote? The missing context here is an additional set of quotation marks. The actual closing lines of the poem are:

    When old age shall this generation waste,
      Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st
  'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
      Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

It is not the narrative voice of the poem that says "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." It is the urn that metaphorically says this to the narrator. The narrator is certainly moved by the perceived message of the urn, but it is by no means clear that the narrator fully agrees. What the poem means—and what Keats himself believed, which of course is not necessarily the same thing—can be debated, but "Keats wrote 'truth is beauty, beauty truth'" distorts by oversimplifying.

Sometimes, even a subtle change in wording can radically change what the speaker meant to say. For example, Charles E. Wilson, president of General Motors from 1941 to 1953, is often slightly misquoted as having said

"What's good for General Motors is good for the country."

The context was his confirmation hearing before the Senate for his appointment as Secretary of Defense. He was asked whether, as a government official, he would be capable of making a decision that would adversely affect General Motors. What he said in full was:

"Yes, sir, I could. I cannot conceive of any because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors, and vice versa."

It's not totally unfair to translate the "vice versa" into "What's good for General Motors is good for the country," but chopping off the "for years I thought" and "what was good for the country was good for General Motors" is; it transforms a forthright statement into a piece of fatuous arrogance.

A blatant example involved columnist Alex Beam writing in the Boston Globe regarding Conservapedia:

Their entry on kangaroos, for instance, says that, "like all modern animals . . . kangaroos are the descendants of the two founding members of the modern kangaroo baramin that were taken aboard Noah's Ark prior to the Great Flood."

By quoting this out of context, Beam gave the impression that Conservapedia was claiming this as the truth. The actual truth, however, is that the quoted text was immediately preceded by "According to the origins theory model used by creation scientists...".

Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty

About the supposedly anti-gay remarks of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson:

• Obviously, context is everything when it comes to understanding truth, but context is also kryptonite to an anti-Christian media and left only interested in furthering their own bigoted agenda.
• To begin with, the Duck Commander did not single out homosexual behavior; he listed over a half-dozen sins, including adultery, greed, bestiality, drunkenness, idolatry, etc. But the most important thing Robertson said I have yet to see anyone in the elite media report:

  You put in your article that the Robertson family really believes strongly that if the human race loved each other and they loved God, we would just be better off. We ought to just be repentant, turn to God, and let’s get on with it, and everything will turn around. Breitbart

Founding Fathers

The Founding Fathers are a popular source of quotes which end up many times being out of context. One of the most common Founding Father quotes is Benjamin Franklin's "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety", which is commonly quoted in the context of the Patriot Act. The reality is that if you read his 1755 Letter to the Governor, nothing remotely close to the Patriot Act applies.

See also

Cafeteria Christianity