By Elaine Carlson

"The wind? I am the wind. The sea and the moon? I am the sea and the moon. Tears, pain, love, bird-flights? I am all of them. I dance what I am. Sin, prayer, flight, the light that never was on land or sea? I dance what I am."  Isadora Duncan

"My motto --- sans limites." 

Isadora Duncan might have thought well of herself. But I suspect she may have made so many  outrageous statements to get the public to pay attention to her. If she was simply a good dancer few people would have known or even cared about her. Is there anything more important to an entertainer than being noticed?

Babe Ruth said, "The only real game I think, in the world, is baseball."

He also said, "You just can't beat the person who never gives up." 

He was a bit more accurate when he seemed to be giving advice to other athletes (and/or celebrities).

"Never forget two things I am going to tell you," he said. "One don't believe everything written about you. Two don't pick up too many checks."

Maybe one of the things we shouldn't believe about that famous baseball player is his best known quotation. 

"I had a better year," was the answer he supposedly gave a reporter who asked him why he was expecting his team to pay him more than what the US President earned. 

A big problem is that exchange was first reported in 1947. And the salary negotiations when he asked for more money than what President Hoover was paid happened in 1930 and 1932. [Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com].

I began to look up quotations when I was thinking of what I would write for this column. I hadn't even settled on a subject. I don't know why I first looked up Isadora Duncan. Maybe because I knew she would be good for a lot of quotes.

Muhammad Ali is also a person well known for what he said. 

"I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet Cong." he said to reporters after the Selective Service decided to reverse their position not to draft him. He didn't go on to say, "No Viet Cong ever called me nigger." 

That expression was popular with African Americans protesting the Vietnam War and the Draft. There is only one time when it can be substantiated that he made that statement – on a movie set. 

"Actually, Ali did say the phrase at least once --- in The Greatest, a 1977 biopic starring Ali as himself, … When a reporter asks whether he wants to go fight 'the enemy,' he answers, "Whose enemy? Man, the Viet Cong never called me nigger. They your enemy, not mine." ["No Viet Cong Ever Called me Nigger" The story behind the famous quote that Muhammad Ali probably never said." by Stefan Fatsis Slate Magazine. June 8, 2016].

The big star Elizabeth Taylor was responsible for a lot of quotations in her life of 79 years.

"I have only slept with men I've been married to. How many women can make that claim?"

That is my favorite of that star's quotations. But there is another one I like almost as much. 

"I haven't read any of the autobiographies about me." 

Who is going to forget that quotation? The "autobiography" she most wanted people to know she hadn't read was The Last Star – Elizabeth Taylor  by Kitty Kelley. That big best seller had just come out. And it didn't present her as a well behaved choir girl. 

Many of the times she spoke she was responding to the discussion about her fame and wealth.

"If someone is dumb enough to offer me a million dollars to make a picture," Taylor said, "I am not going to be dumb enough to turn them down."

"Big girls need big diamonds," and "It's not the having. It's the getting."

She could make fun of herself for having been married so many times. 

"My mother says I didn't open my eyes for eight days after I was born," she said. "Just when I did, the first thing I saw was an engagement ring. I was hooked."

I know very well that our friends and relatives can make insightful and meaningful statements. But I think we need to realize a person has to be famous to make quotations. It's our society's drawback that we give so much deference to people just because they got famous.