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Meaningless quotes

Social media is full of inspirational quotes, and some of them make their way into business presentations as well. I am not a big fan of them. A few nice ones from Quartz:

“By maturing, we self-actualize.”
“We dream, we vibrate, we are reborn.”
“Choice is the driver of purpose.”

And now there is research that found a negative correlation between people who like these quotes and IQ (it looks genuine).

When are quotes useful in presentations?

  • When they are relevant to what you are talking about
  • When they are given by someone with credibility
  • When they have a nice, unexpected, twist or contradiction
  • When they are not cliche
  • When they are easy to read/digest (most of the time, this means short)

It is not very often that you find one that matches all these criteria.

UPDATE February 2018: I have added a new post about using quotes in PowerPoint to the blog


Image: The book of nonsense by Edward Lear