Nothing is more dangerous than an idiot with a quotation

It’s so easy to confuse poetry with wisdom. The other day I found this phrase on a website of quotes about love: “If you can’t understand my silence, you don’t deserve my words.”

That’s a catchy turn of phrase, with nice symmetry. I found myself nodding in agreement, until I thought about what it actually meant, which was this: “Never tell anyone what you’re thinking or how you’re feeling. If they really cared about you, they’d be able to read your mind.”

Criss Angel: the only man who’ll ever care about you.

By the way, I thought about blogging about this yesterday, but then I thought that not blogging about it might explore the issue just as well. Because if my readers don’t understand my silence, they don’t deserve my words. So yesterday, I didn’t blog it, and today I am. Let’s see which day is more effective.

When I read this, I got thinking how much damage this proverb could do in the wrong hands - i.e. ones linked to impressionable minds. (Not directly, obviously. I mean linked via wrists, arms, shoulders, necks and spines. People with hands coming directly out the sides of their heads have bigger problems than misleading proverbs.)

Communication is the foundation of our entire civilisation. It’s the reason we aren’t still sleeping in animal skins and living in caves. If not for communication, the guy who invented bread would be the only person who’d ever eaten it, because he couldn’t explain to anyone else how it worked. So a world in which you need to understand someone’s silence before you deserve their words is an ugly place indeed.

I suppose this is why every proverb has an equal and opposite re-proverb. Too many cooks spoil the broth, yet many hands make light work. Patience is a virtue, but strike while the iron’s hot.

Twenty years since Home Alone, and he still has the scars from the hot iron that struck him.

So the “you don’t deserve my words” quote just needs an opposing quote to cancel it out. I suggest one of the following:

“If you can’t understand my silence, then maybe I’d better speak up.”

“A hidden problem is a permanent problem.”

“Telepathy isn’t real.”

There. Fixed.



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