# Authors cited more than read **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [August 31, 2001, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129 "2001-08-31T15:53:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/21 "2001-08-31T19:14:09Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Jeff \* > \*\*Alexander Pope, perhaps? > > I imagine few people who use the expressions _“Too err is human, to forgive divine”_ and _“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing”_ have even the remotest clue where they come from. Most would probably attribute them to Shakespeare. \*\* Pope has to be a contender. He gets 6 pages in the **Oxford Dictionary Of Quotations**. From whence comes this: ‘A little _learning_ is a dang’rous thing;’ **An Essay On Criticism (1711)** ---
**Author:** ![PookahMacPhellimey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pookahmacphellimey/32/3175_2.png) [@PookahMacPhellimey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PookahMacPhellimey)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/22 "2001-08-31T19:15:19Z")
Personally (and there’s more people like me) I am forever quoting Oscar Wilde, but I have only read one novel and one play by him. Then again, The Picture of Dorian Gray is almost consistently one quote after another, so I do not think Oscar would have minded too much. He kind of liked the oneliners. One my faves (though there’s lots of good ones): “Work is the curse of the drinking classes” ---
**Author:** ![WEW](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8edcca/32.png) [@WEW](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WEW)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/23 "2001-08-31T19:40:42Z")
**Mighty Maximino** said > [@](#): > > Hmm, I’m not sure if this is what you’re after, but I think Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I see references to it in many scholarly-type articles, but I know only a very few people that have ever finished the whole thing. I’ve only met one person besides myself who heard of that book, let alone attempted to read it. I should find some smarter friends I guess. I tried to read it in HS, but got bogged down in the Math about half way through. I’ve been meaning to try again. ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/24 "2001-08-31T20:00:11Z")
God. ---
**Author:** ![magdalene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@magdalene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magdalene)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/25 "2001-08-31T20:10:39Z")
I’d say the Bible, for starters. Lots of kids learn Bible quotes in Sunday school and have passages read to them during services, but I think few people really sit down and read the Bible from cover to cover and try to take it all in. When you do that you get a much more varied picture - rather than it feeling like “God’s Lucid and Clear Word From Above” you see the incredible history and variety of writers, thinkers, and poets over thousands of years. At my university it was a running joke that the people who had not read the book were the ones who commented on it most during class discussions. Based on those years alone I’d say John Stuart Mill, Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and John Rawls are oft quoted but seldom read by political types. I had to read On Liberty for 5 separate classes, write numerous papers on it, and 5 years later couldn’t tell you a damn quote though. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/26 "2001-08-31T20:16:40Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by magdalene \* > \*\*John Rawls \*\* _You’ll never know Another love like mine._ What a voice! He wrote a book?! ---
**Author:** ![magdalene](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@magdalene](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magdalene)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/27 "2001-08-31T20:22:18Z")
Err…John Rawls the political philospher. He is famous for A Theory of Justice, of which [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) says: > [@](#): > > Book Description > Since it appeared in 1971, John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice has become a classic. The author has now revised the original edition to clear up a number of difficulties he and others have found in the original book. Rawls aims to express an essential part of the common core of the democratic tradition-justice as fairness-and to provide an alternative to utilitarianism, which had dominated the Anglo-Saxon tradition of political thought since the nineteenth century. Rawls substitutes the ideal of the social contract as a more satisfactory account of the basic rights and liberties of citizens as free and equal persons. “Each person,” writes Rawls, “possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override.” Advancing the ideas of Rousseau, Kant, Emerson, and Lincoln, Rawls’s theory is as powerful today as it was when first published. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 8:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/28 "2001-08-31T20:26:05Z")
Yeah, but does he have his own website? [http://www.lourawls.com/final\_frameset.html](http://www.lourawls.com/final_frameset.html) (Gotta love the animated “thumbs up”!) ---
**Author:** ![Katisha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/bcef8e/32.png) [@Katisha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Katisha)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/29 "2001-08-31T21:03:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Pyrrhonist \* > \*\*Are you excluding _Candide?_ Isn’t that still a standard? > \*\* Dammit! And here I thought I had carte blanche to quote that… 😉 I’d also add _Paradise Lost_ to the list (wonder how many people learned “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven” from Star Trek? ;)), and perhaps Nietzsche and Ayn Rand. Only tangentially related, because people do read Shakespeare 😉 : there’s Shakespeare’s famous “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” (from _Henry VI, Part II_), so often quoted without knowing the context: the line is spoken by a would-be tyrant (well, the right-hand man of a would-be tyrant). Context is our friend. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/30 "2001-08-31T21:40:36Z")
[_Common Sense_](http://www.bartleby.com/133/) and [The Federalist Papers](http://memory.loc.gov/const/fedquery.html). And, at least in my own case, the _Principia Matematica_. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 10:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/31 "2001-08-31T22:08:50Z")
You actually walk around referencing _Principia Matematica_? How exactly does that come up in conversation? I know of very few people who have actually read their copies of _The Tao of Physics_ and _Zen and the Art of Motorcyle Maintenance_. Just like everyboy alive in the 60s was at Woodstock and nobody voted for Reagan in 1984, I would say that not nearly as many people read Jack Kerouac’s _On the Road_ as claimed they did. ---
**Author:** ![obfusciatrist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/4af34b/32.png) [@obfusciatrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/obfusciatrist)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/32 "2001-08-31T22:10:06Z")
Oh, an my personal one is Herodotus’ _The Histories_. I wrote at least a half-dozen papers on that book in college and I’ve still never read more than two consecutive pages. ---
**Author:** ![Wumpus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8c91f0/32.png) [@Wumpus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wumpus)\ **Post date:** [August 31, 2001, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/33 "2001-08-31T22:20:38Z")
I think Karl Marx would probably win the world-wide most-cited/least-read contest for the last 100 years. He probably won’t even make the top 50 in the next century, though. ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2001, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/34 "2001-09-01T01:59:06Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by Katisha \* \*\* > [@](#): > > Only tangentially related, because people do read Shakespeare 😉 : there’s Shakespeare’s famous “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers” (from _Henry VI, Part II_), so often quoted without knowing the context: the line is spoken by a would-be tyrant (well, the right-hand man of a would-be tyrant). > > Context is our friend. 😉 \*\* Which brings to mind: “If music be the food of love, play on.” often quoted as a joyful exhortation, when it’s actually Duke Orsino totally miserable about being rejected by Olivia, and the rest of it is: “Give me excess of it, that surfeiting the appitite may sicken and so die.” Not exactly what you want on your Valentine anymore. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2001, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/35 "2001-09-01T03:54:03Z")
Quoth **Mighty Maximino** : > [@](#): > > Hmm, I’m not sure if this is what you’re after, but I think Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter. I see references to it in many scholarly-type articles, but I know only a very few people that have ever finished the whole thing. Then again, most of the folks who refer to it have read it. And yes, I have read the whole thing. Shakespeare may be more often read than Pope or the other contenders, but he’s also cited far more often. I’d say that if we’re looking for a ratio of cites to reads (or viewings, to be fair), then Bill’s our man. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2001, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/36 "2001-09-01T06:00:53Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Mighty Maximino \* > \*\*Hmm, I’m not sure if this is what you’re after, but I think _Godel, Escher, Bach_ by Douglas Hofstadter. I see references to it in many scholarly-type articles, but I know only a very few people that have ever finished the whole thing. \*\* I read the whole thing. Hell, it got to be a real page-turner, at least for a rather geeky guy like me. I still do propositional calculus whenever I have a pen, some paper, and too much free time. By the way, where do you see it referenced? I think I might want to devour a couple of those publications and/or books. 🙂 > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ethilrist \* > **God.** Who wrote that one? Was it (holy) ghost-written? I slay me. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2001, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/37 "2001-09-01T15:45:17Z")
GEB: Does it count if I’ve read it, but don’t understand it? ---
**Author:** ![Lionors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c37758/32.png) [@Lionors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lionors)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2001, 11:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/38 "2001-09-01T23:00:48Z")
First choice of a work cited more than it’s read would be Mein Kampf. Second would be Karl Marx’s works, but that’s been done. Third, Goethe, Faust in particular. ---
**Author:** ![Lionors](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c37758/32.png) [@Lionors](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lionors)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2001, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/39 "2001-09-01T23:09:29Z")
On second thought, put me with the Shakespeare crowd, then the rest of what I had. ---
**Author:** ![pesch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pesch/32/4925_2.png) [@pesch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pesch)\ **Post date:** [September 1, 2001, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129/40 "2001-09-01T23:47:05Z")
You could expand this thread to include people who are not necessarily authors in the literary sense (that is, producing fiction.) In the US, Thomas Jefferson gets quoted by both sides in the “Was the US founded on Christian principles?” question, and they certainly did not read anything by the man, including the Declaration of Independence. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-cited-more-than-read/79129.md?page=1)