Review of "The Last Word: A Treasury of Women's Quotes" by Carolyn Warner

Score: 94+/100 (9.4+ out of 10)

We know you have one:
A book of quotes.

A notebook or Google Doc filled with all the great or interesting things you've read or that people have said to you.

Or maybe you have a dusty old calendar that you kept because there was a beautiful, inspirational, or witty quote on every other page.

You keep telling yourself that you'll use those someday.

There’s a reason we keep these.

These quotes are tiny, portable jolts of perspective, comfort, and courage. A single sentence can make you feel less alone, help you reframe a problem, or give you exactly the turn of phrase you need to finally land a point with your audience or your kids or your coworkers.

In a sense, this book is that quote-filled Google Doc, only bigger, better organized, and very intentionally centered on women’s voices. Carolyn Warner gathers over two thousand quotations from women and arranges them into forty themed chapters like Ability, Action, Age, Courage, Education, Humor, Leadership, Love, Politics, Women, and Work. Each chapter opens with a short, practical mini-essay from Warner on how that theme plays out in real speeches, conversations, and leadership moments, and then hands the mic to a chorus of women from across history and public life.

Warner herself comes out of a world of speeches and stump talks, and you can feel it. She tells stories about growing up as a teen speaker, scribbling quotations on index cards, and learning the hard way how a well chosen line can wake up a drowsy audience. One of the sparks for this book was hearing a male editor of a famous quotation anthology dismiss women on the grounds that “they do not write much or have much to say.” This treasury is her answer to that, a big, loud, joyful refutation bound between covers.

The variety of voices is one of the pleasures here. You get judges, prime ministers, novelists, comedians, activists, scientists, and even fictional characters like Miss Piggy, often sitting side by side in surprising and delightful ways. Some quotes are quiet and wise, some are fiery and challenging, and some are just laugh out loud funny, but together they remind you that women have been thinking, observing, and speaking sharply about every human topic you can imagine.

This might be silly to say (considering this is a collection of quotes), but the highlights of this book are the quotes themselves and the people they're attributed to. Seriously, though! These are some of the most noteworthy women (and people) who ever lived: Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, George Eliot, Pearl S. Buck, Marie Curie, Indira Gandhi, Golda Meir, Queen Elizabeth II, Susan B. Anthony (she pops up A LOT, it seems), Rosa Parks, Amelia Earhart, Helen Keller, Margaret Mead, Maya Angelou, Agatha Christie, Erma Bombeck, and many more. Heck, this book literally opens with a foreword by the incomparable Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court and one of the most influential legal figures in American history.

This book doubles as a celebration of the incredible, earth-shaking, glass-ceiling-breaking, record-breaking, headline-making, history making women throughout all of time! These are politicians, world leaders, champions, literary greats, Olympic medalists, actresses, scientists, pioneers, and more.

It can be really inspirational for mothers and daughters—heck, anyone! If you're a living, breathing human being, there's bound to be a quote in here you'll love.

Oh, one thing we have to mention is how so many of these women have been mentioned and/or heavily featured in other books we've read! In fact, there are a lot of quotes by Mother Theresa (usually called "St. Theresa of Jesus" in this book) and legendary actress Ethel Merman, both of whom were heavily featured in author Tony Cointreau's books, Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa...and Me and A Gift of Love--serving as sort of motherly figures to Cointreau.

As a straight read through, this works more like a “dive in anywhere” treasury than a linear narrative, but as a working tool for speakers, teachers, writers, and leaders, it is excellent. It gives you not only the words, but also a bit of coaching on how and when to use them, and it does all of that while quietly correcting the old, biased picture of who gets to have “the last word” in our quote books and on our stages.

There are actually a multitude of valuable ways to use this book. You can use it in the straightforward way: as a collection of quotes. Or you can use it in the way the author seems to have intended: for use in communication, in presentations, and public speaking occasions. The fact that this book is well-organized helps you to just find what you need, plug, and play.

These quotes can serve as the hook and/or anchor for a Power Point presentation, speech, or lecture, for example. The author also talks about other aspects of presenting like the colors and clothes you wear as well as the body language you exhibit. One of the best quotes from this book is actually just Warner explaing: "As a speaker, perhaps the most empowering quality you can communicate to your listeners is to cause them to care."

There's even a short section on respecting your audience's time and attention.

This actually reminded us a little bit of Briefly Speaking by Deborah Shames and David Booth, in that sense.

Just like entire religions and ideologies have been built around quotes, you can build your entire presentation on them!

Here are some of our favorite quotes from the book:

"When I was young, I was poor; when old, I became rich;
but in each condition I found disappointment. When I had the faculties for
enjoyment, I had not the means; when the means came, the faculties were gone."
- Comtesse Catherine de Gasparin

"Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his
audience."
- Dame Rebecca Wes

"Do not call for black power or green power. Call for brain power."
- Barbara Jordan

"When men are oppressed, it is tragedy. When women are oppressed, it is tradition"
- Bernadette Mosala

"Everybody has a purpose in life, even if it is to serve as a bad example."
- Carolyn Warner's Grandmother

"Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know it so it goes on flying anyway."
- Mary Kay Ash

"We have to preach what winners practice."
- Mary Jean LeTendre

"God is a sure paymaster. He may not pay at the end of every week, or month, or
year, but remember He pays in the end."
- Anne of Austria

"Nearly everyone is in favor of going to heaven but too many are hoping they live long enough to see an easing of the entrance requirements."
- Anonymous

"Imagination is the highest kite one can fly."
- Lauren Bacall

"The only place you find success before work is in the dictionary."
- May V. Smith

Perhaps our favorite passage from this book was:

"Kids don't make the movies, they don't write the books,
They don't paint gay pictures of gangsters and crooks,
They don't make the liquor, they don't run the bars,
They don't make the law and they don't sell the cars,
They don't peddle the drugs that addle the brain,
That's all done by older folks greedy for gain.
Delinquent teenagers, Oh how we condemn
The sins of the nation and blame it on them.
By the laws of the blameless the Savior made known,
Who is there among us to cast the first stone?
For in so many cases (it's sad but it's true),
The title 'delinquent' fits older folks too."
- Margaret Hogan

This one resonated with us for some reason, perhaps because it points out the influences that books, movies, music, and media have on our children and how most of that is peddled by older people with power and money to gain more power and money. That's profound yet eerily true!

Now, this book—which is written monstly for women—does sometimes seem heavily feminist or even derogatory-toward-men in a way that could rub some readers the wrong way. It definitely wasn't the author's intention to be explicitly anti-male, but there are a lot of quotes in here that put men down, poke fun at them, or blame them for some of society's ills. Even some of the funnier-seeming quotes can cut a bit sharp to men.

Here are a few:

"I require only three things of a man: he must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid."
- Dorothy Parker

"After all, God made man and then said: I can do better than that—and made woman."
- Adele Rogers St Johns

"A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle."
- Gloria Steinem

These are light roasts, to be fair, but they help to give the book an angle that's slanted in a particular way, especially when there's a lot of talk in this book about the hardships of just being female (as opposed to male). So, if that bothers you, it bothers you.

All in all, though, this is a really interesting book with great quotes to pull from.

Check it out on Amazon!