The Notable Quotes of 2011. In a Word, This List is…Winning.
By: Steve Grumm
A Yale Law librarian has for the past several years compiled a list of the outgoing year’s ten most notable quotes. Here’s the Detroit Free Press reporting on 2011’s best (and sometimes, worst) rhetorical flourishes:
Fred Shapiro, associate librarian at Yale Law School, has released his sixth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year.
The original “Yale Book of Quotations” was published in 2006. Since then, Shapiro has released an annual list of the top 10 quotes that would be incorporated into the next edition. Shapiro picks quotes that are famous, important or revealing of the spirit of the times, not necessarily ones that are the most eloquent or admirable.
The list:
1. “We are the 99%.” — slogan of the Occupy movement.
2. “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there — good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.” — U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren, speaking in Andover, Mass., in August.
3. “My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress.” — Billionaire Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed on Aug. 15
…
Click into the story for the rest of the quotes, including Herman Cain’s pronunciation of a central Asian nation, Charlie Sheen being high on life, and former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s seeming inability to recognize…oh, those jokes were always too easy.