History

Praise for Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations:

“No writer or public speaker can afford to be without Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations – the best modern compilation of its kind.” –William Safire

“A book whose editor and origin are as distinctive to our age as Bartlett and his Harvard patrons were to the 1850s.” –Newsweek

“A top-of-the-news companion to Bartlett’s.” –Boston Globe

“An important addition to the literature of quotations. A comprehensive survey of whom and what has been worth quoting.”–Library Journal

THE REV. JAMES B. SIMPSON

“It’s been a joyful march through almost five decades in a wild, abandoned romance with the words of others,” the Rev. James B. Simpson.

For more than 40 years, the Rev. James B. Simpson saw as his mission the documentation of the words of leaders, thinkers, journalists, social activists, artists, and pundits. He fulfilled that mission with great success, becoming the modern John Bartlett of Familiar Quotations fame.

But while Bartlett’s goal was to help locate the precise form of the quotes of the ancients and the literary classics, Simpson, with his journalist’s sensibility, had another plan. His elegant idea was to tell us what our contemporaries were saying as they said it. He wanted us to see their words in the pure, stark readable language of the day so that we could properly assess, not only the words, but perhaps the character behind them. He sought to help make sense of our world amid the modern-day din of images and spin. At a time when words are often uttered and withdrawn in a baffling sleight of hand, Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations holds them safely in time for closer examination.

Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations is a series of books compiled and edited by Simpson beginning in 1964, the last edition being published by Harper Collins in 1997. Simpson’s legacy lives on in an online format at www.profundity.net.

As the late librarian of Congress, Daniel Boorstin, said of Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, “… Simpson offers us a delightfully ‘contemporary’ pleasure that we seldom find in quotations from the more remote past. Classical authors – Plato, Shakespeare, Milton or Tennyson – impress us by their cogency, their profundity or their eloquence. But quotations from the people whom we have come to know in our own time can have an added, subtly human dimension – the irony and conceit, pride and mock humility, and megalomania of those who said it. Among our contemporaries we can be amused and surprised and instructed not only by what was said but by who said it and when. The boasts of Alexander the Great or Cromwell may be raw material for historians, but when Idi Amin says ‘I am the hero of Africa,’ or the Soviet premier Leonid I Brezhnev says ‘God will not forgive us if we fail,’ they enlighten us as they never intended.”

A native of Arkansas, Simpson attended Northwestern University near Chicago. As a journalist he wrote for the Associated Press and United Press International, was a television network consultant, worked in the advertising world as an account executive and then had a stint in corporate public relations. “These experiences finally inspired him to still another view of the immortal word, and he became an Episcopal priest,” as Boorstin put it.

Simpson had many friends in the literary, journalistic, and religious worlds, and he got fan mail from far and wide for his books of quotations. His interest in quotes stemmed from his journalistic experience and an introduction to early television. One of his first jobs involved searching for the funny or unique sayings of upcoming guest stars on the early NBC talk show, "Who Said That?" He left his career as a journalist at 38 to become a priest after writing the biography of Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury. However, he retained a strong appreciation for journalism. A voracious reader, he turned his analytical eye to the words of others, always looking out for an interesting, meaningful, or unique phrase.

On choosing quotes, he said he would read many newspapers daily, highlight his favorite sayings, and then let them sit for a week or two before taking a second look. He would then catalog the story from which the quote was taken and note its source, date and context. He took his quotes, according to a 1997 Christian Science Monitor article, from not only newspapers but weekly and monthly magazines and the transcripts of 60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline NBC, and Primetime live, and Sunday Morning television broadcasts.

Simpson wrote that Contemporary Quotations picks up where James Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (first published in 1855) leaves off in that it seeks to capture the important quotes of our time as, or before, they become classics. He said he chose quotes for his book based on their uniqueness, for how they stood out within a context, and the likeliness that they would have lasting power. One of the most important elements of his quotes, he wrote, was that they were accessible to his readers. This, he felt, was something that made Simpson's Contemporary Quotations unique. He also found the historical and societal context of quotes important.

As Boorstin put it, Simpson’s quotation books “will not make you seem learned. But (they) can help you reap continuing amusement and instruction – with quotable words – from the fleeting moments and ephemeral images of our times.”

In accordance with the bequest of Simpson at his death in March 2002, American University now hosts the Simpson Room on the fourth floor of the School of Communication. The room contains Father Simpson’s personal collection of quotes - more than 22,000 from the second half of the 20th century - and a collection of busts of famous quote-makers. It also serves as the headquarters for the Simpson Fellowship, awarded each year by the School of Communication.