One might wonder what motivates a person to begin collecting cliches.  Well, it was 1993 and I was in my second year of physics graduate school.  That would explain everything--grad school makes you crazy--but there's a little more to the story.  I was reading a book called Maybe, Maybe Not, by the author of that tome of ancient wisdom, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten, Robert Fulghum.  When suddenly ...

I hit a chapter all about contradicting cliches.  For example:

"The early bird gets the worm."  But "Good things come to those who wait."

"Look before you leap."  But "He who hesitates is lost."

Something about these contradictions struck me as odd.  You see, cliches are part of the collective common knowledge of our culture. 

If you want someone to listen to you without thinking about it, just throw out some cliches.  Suppose you're a door to door salesman.  You say, "Come on, he who hesitates is lost."  The person at the door won't say, "No, that's not true." 

It's common knowledge, of course it's true.

These little tidbits get past all of our filters.  They are so familiar and so accepted that we never question them. 

But when you see contradicting cliches side-by-side you have to think about it.  And then you have to call into question everything you believe.

My own spiritual crisis ultimate led to the conclusion that truth is like an elephant to a blind man.  Depending on which part of the elephant he encounters, he may think it's like a wall, a firehose or a rope.  But the real truth is all of those things put together. 

When cliches contradict one another, it's not that they are wrong, or incorrect, but that they are both a part of the truth.  Truth is multi-faceted like a diamond.  And in the hands of a master, it will sparkle.

All we can do in life is strive to see more of the truth knowing that no matter how we might try, we won't see it all.  But the more we see, the more beautiful it becomes.

Each cliche is one little facet of the truth.  More cliches, more truth.

So I started a list of cliches, originally to find more contradictions, but I soon discovered that other people were oddly (strangely, obsessively, perversely) intrigued by cliches as well.

At parties, people would sit around me yelling out cliches and laughing like crazy while I wrote as fast as I could.

The National Organization of Copy Editors which sends materials to all major newspapers, wrote an article about my list.

Penn and Teller linked to my list on their website.

Numerous teachers and students thanked me for giving them the resource they needed to complete their project.

The list lives on.

     - Steve Lautenschlager, Ph.D. (I did eventually finish graduate school.)