The dictionary is an exclusive club for those famously quotable people to whom speechwriters turn when seeking relief from the turgid needs of, say, the keynote address to the Fourth Annual Convention of Mattress Manufacturers.
There are a number of quotesmiths who stand out from the pack.
If speakers think the world or the mattress industry is turning to custard, and they need to rally the troops with stirring words, the stalwarts to turn to are John F.Kennedy and Winston Churchill.
JFK, whose speeches inspired the boomer generation, is revered by speakers of the motivational ilk.
"From those to whom much is given, much is required," is a good stern reprimand to set up an audience for a cheer-you-up follow-through like "The torch has been passed to a new generation." (The modern mattressmaker).
Churchill can be a problem.
He works well enough in print, but retold by the wrong person we hear a pale imitation of the British leader's distinctive cigar- and port-stained rumble.
Herman Goering, whose Nazi Luftwaffe slaughtered Churchill's few to whom so many owed so much, would have regurgitated his cyanide tablet if he'd realised the Churchill speeches were to become a slice of England's verbal culture.
"Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning," Goering once remarked.
Warming to the theme he observed: "Education is dangerous. Every educated person is a future enemy."
The veracity of many popular quotes is actually dodgy.
Take Edmund Burke and Thomas Jefferson, to whom we turn when searching for solemn profundity, Burke's "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing", only became renowned when a Kennedy speech attributed it to him.
Ralph Keyes in his book The Quote Verifier points out no scholar has found this line in any of Burke's writings.
In short, he never said it.
So how did the mistake happen? JFK's speechwriter, Theodore Sorenson, explained his boss did his rewrites personally, sometimes inserting spottily recalled quotes that he rarely checked.
Thomas Jefferson's famous complaint that society pays its plumbers more than its teachers, resonates today.
It is wise, pithy, and he couldn't possibly have said it.
In 1788 people who fixed pipes weren't yet called plumbers.
But the philosopher president was an ideal "mark" for a wise plumber quote - because when he built his Monticello mansion in Virginia, he invented a revolutionary system of air piping that famously de-ponged the indoor toilets.
I suspect the most requoted print humour comes from the early "celebrities", Groucho Marx, Dorothy Parker, and Oscar Wilde.
All long dead, but all examples of how a reputation adds gloss to a quote. Saying "To quote Groucho Marx", is like holding up an "Applaud now" sign in a TV studio.
We laugh because we're expected to, not just because "Go and darken my towels no more" is a great line.
Parker and Wilde were the masters of urbane aphorism.
Parker ("brevity is the soul of lingerie") is credited with so many smart lines, I think the waiters at her famed luncheon table in New York's Algonquin hotel were paid to keep minutes.
The '30s playwright George F. Kauffman bitterly observed that anything half decent he wrote would eventually be credited to the bon mot queen.
Ms Parker in turn thought many one-liners mis-attributed to her came from Wilde, who of course despised America: "It's the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilisation in between," he said.
"America was often discovered before Columbus, but it was always hushed up," is his elaboration on the theme.
A quote may also be boosted by coming from someone whose relevance gives it a mad authority.
The idiotic 1899 statement that "everything that can be invented has been invented" is made triply enjoyable by being sourced to Charles H. Duell, commissioner of the United States Patents Office.
But was he really that dopey? Probably not.
It turns out the same statement was attributed to his predecessors in office in 1833 and again in 1845.
My favourite quotesmith is the crass Hollywood mogul Sam Goldwyn, of "Gentlemen, include me out" fame.
Goldwyn, the prince of the mangled mal mot, left us gems like, "Our comedies are not to be laughed at", and, "Anyone who sees a shrink needs his head read".
But even Goldwyn received wind assistance.
Enemies in the Hollywood crowd had begun inventing grotesque lines they maliciously passed off as "Goldwynisms".
It got so bad that Goldwyn declared "I hate my mouth", and hired a PR man to solve his problem.
I suspect the consultant's verdict that the jokes were actually affectionate gilded a very large invoice.
Goldwyn's son Sam jun followed up with a detailed investigation that showed "only" (ye Gods) 28 Goldwynisms could be authenticated.
If Goldwynisms were just the garbled utterances of a malign idiot, they'd be forgotten.
But they're colourfully packaged thoughts made powerful by inspired contradiction.
Witness: "A verbal contract is not worth the paper it is written on"; and, "When I want your opinion I'll give it to you."
Really, did William Shakespeare, that most quoted sage of all, do all that much better?
• John Lapsley is a writer who lives in Arrowtown.
