# Help with literary quotes out of context...



## amishrockstar (Jul 26, 2009)

*Can you give an example of a literary or textbook quotation that only cited a part of what somebody said (possibly a founding father) and why the partial quote was misleading (at best)?
I'm thinking of teaching a particular exercise in my English 101 class; I want to start with the phrase, "A text without a context is a pretext," and I want to help my students to see that they need to critically evaluate what the textbooks and their teachers say --rather than simply accept it all as gospel truth.
I'll be working in a secular college, so while I won't be preaching the gospel, I do want to give them tools to evaluate the secular/humanistic garbage that they'll be fed over the next 4 years. 
Thanks,
Matthew*


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## bookslover (Jul 26, 2009)

This is slightly off topic, but one thing you could teach them is that, when they read a newspaper, it's important to read more than the headline, the subheadline, and the first paragraph or two. It's important to read the entire story because (especially with liberal papers) the actual facts of the situation will often be buried down in paragraph 19 (if not paragraph 34). Sometimes those facts will even disagree with the liberal spin of the first couple of paragraphs.


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## amishrockstar (Jul 26, 2009)

Thanks Richard,
I'll be teaching composition/rhetoric/argumentation this fall --it's my first teaching assignment. I appreciate your suggestion and I'll try and find a way to use what you wrote about. Maybe that can be something that they do during their 5 min. journal time at the beginning of the class.


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## jambo (Jul 26, 2009)

I recall hearing a story of Billy Graham arriving in, I think, Berlin. A journalist asked, tongue in cheek, if he would be visiting any night clubs whilst in Berlin. Billy Graham jokingly replied "Are there night clubs in Berlin?" 

The next a paper reported: "Billy Graham asks, 'Are there night clubs in Berlin?'"


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## amishrockstar (Jul 26, 2009)

Stuart,
That would be a perfect example, but I can't find the article online. Do you have a source for that?
Thanks,
Matthew


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## jambo (Jul 26, 2009)

Its strange how the mind plays tricks. I remembered hearing this about Billy Graham but having googled it I discovered it was an illustration by Billy Graham and about New York rather than Berlin.

The paragraph is:-

_I heard about a bishop who came over from London to the United States. He landed in New York. And he had been warned that the American press might ask him some trick questions, so he was waiting for them. And one of them said, "Sir, do you expect to attend nightclubs while you are here in New York?" He didn't want to offend anybody; he wanted to be tactful. So he asked them, "Are there any nightclubs in New York?" The next day a tabloid came out and said, "The first question the bishop asked when he got here was, 'Are there any nightclubs in New York?'" Sometimes one can be misunderstood._

And can be located at 10/1/58 - "God's Forgetfulness"


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## amishrockstar (Jul 26, 2009)

Great! Thanks Stuart. 
That may be something I'll use in my class.


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## Semper Fidelis (Jul 26, 2009)

This site sells T-shirts that show how amusing out of context quotes can be: Out of Context Quotes - Funny & Weird Quotations - T-shirts, Sweatshirts

This Wikipedia article is interesting on a few levels because it focuses most of its energy against Creationists: [ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_quoting_out_of_context]Fallacy of quoting out of context - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]


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