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Eleanor Roosevelt was a pretty cool dame. A bold feminist and civil rights activist, she often publicly disagreed with her husband’s policies. ‘You might be the leader of the free world, Frank, but you’re talkin’ shit!’ (I’m paraphrasing.)

She was also the first FLOTUS to hold her own press conferences and she banned men from attending them, forcing newspapers to employ female reporters in order to cover what she said. This was the 1930s, mind. That took some proper ladyballs.

She hung out with other inspirational women like pioneer pilot Amelia Earhart and ground-breaking journalist Lorena Hickok. She gave birth to six children even though she didn’t really like babies and, throughout everything, she put up with the humiliation of her husband’s infidelities.

Did you know, according to t’internet, Eleanor spoke entirely in inspirational quotes? Yup. She only ever spoke in bitesize pieces of pithy wisdom that fit perfectly into a meme generator with a floaty font and a meadowful of daisies.

‘Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.’

Now, I like Eleanor. She seems like a broad who I could get along with. But that quote is bullshit, if you’ll forgive my Anglo Saxon.

I don’t know its exact origins, but I assume Eleanor wrote it in one of her newspaper columns, hoping to inspire wartime housewives to stop gossiping about their neighbours and start thinking of positive ways to embrace post-segragation America.

But just how motivational is it to tell 99.9% of the population that they are ‘small-minded’?

What’s the air up like there on the moral high ground, Eleanor? Can we assume you and your cool pals only ever talked of social reform, the New Deal, the de-industrialisation of Germany? Maybe a handful of times you stooped to talk about the invasion of Belgium, or Pearl Harbor. And there was that one time Lorena let slip that she was a lesbian.

In a massively roundabout way, what I’m trying to say is that most ‘motivational quotes’ are, for want of a better word, shite.

Look at this one.

‘Words build bridges into unexplored regions.’

It’s good, eh? True. Inspiring. Who said it? Ernest Hemingway.

I’m kidding. It was Hitler.

Somehow, we have grown to assume that the words of people we admire carry more meaning than the words of ordinary people or, indeed, murderous dictators.

They don’t.

Furthermore, we don’t use quotes and sayings to challenge our beliefs, only to affirm them. That’s okay if you’re just trying to cheer up your Instagram pals, but if you’re using them to make yourself seem smart, or to mark yourself out as part of a tribe that is somehow better than the rest of humanity (and plenty people do) then, frankly, you’re an asshat.

I think the worst kind of quotes are the ones that urge you to stop at nothing to turn your passion into making a living. I’ve already written about this, and you can read the post here. Ironically, it ends with a motivational quote. I know, I’m a dickhead.

Steve Jobs was King of the Motivational Quote. Check out these nuggets.

‘Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower’ = I’m brilliant, a few other people are also brilliant, and the rest of you just troop along behind, much like arseholes.

‘It’s better to be a pirate than to join the navy’ = Sometimes I also steal ideas to be brilliant.

‘The only way to do great work is to love what you do’ = I’m brilliant and, furthermore, I’m quite happy for thousands of people to earn crummy factory wages so that I can do something I love.

Oh, the irony of typing this on my Mac.

I know I have taken every single quote out of context and that’s my point (yes, there is one, and it’s coming right now, you’ll be glad to hear).

As someone who works with words, I often hear people say they’re ‘not good at writing’. They say they don’t know how to express themselves properly, and that makes me sad.

I also don’t believe it to be true.

When you really feel strongly about something, it shows. The best way to make yourself understood is to use your own words, not someone else’s.

Now, can someone put that in a typewriter font and stick it in front of a picture of a sunset?