I just heard Dennis Prager say that there are both true and false cliches. Now Prager is a font of wisdom and good sense and a national treasure. The fact that the Left hates him is proof positive of that. But I can't see that he is right on this point.
A cliche is a trite or hackneyed expression. It is a form of words regularly and often thoughtlessly repeated. 'Haste makes waste.' 'Don't put all your eggs in one basket.' 'He who hesitates is lost.' 'The early bird gets the worm.' 'As old as the hills.' 'Dead as a doornail.' 'Proof positive.' 'First and foremost.' What makes a cliche a cliche is a lack of novelty or originality but not a lack of truth. One typically 'parrots' a cliche, and those whose conversations are filled with them we suspect of being shallow and unreflective. One can, of course, repeat a cliche without 'parroting' it. We conservatives like many cliches since they are as it were the distillate of hard-won wisdom. After all, in most instances, haste does make waste as experience teaches. I can point that out both thoughtlessly and thoughtfully. Think of how foolish it would be to refuse to teach a child this truth on the ground that it is a cliche! Only a liberal could be so foolish. Better a stale truth than a false novelty. Think of all the Madoff investors who to their serious detriment violated ' Don't put all your eggs in one basket.'
I urge the following theses.
1. There cannot be false cliches. Every cliche as such is true, assuming that the cliche is a sentence and not a mere phrase.
2. (1) is descriptively accurate, or at least descriptively accurate relative to educated Americans of my generation.
3. (1) prescribes how one ought to use the word. I am an unabashed linguistic prescriptivist. One can misuse words. For example, if you call your flat tire a dilemma, then I say you are misusing 'dilemma.' A dilemma is not any old problem, but a very specific sort of propblem. If you tell me that language is always changing, I will reply that that change needn't be improvement. Obama and Co. take note.
4. Truth trumps novelty. Better a cliche than a falsehood. So it is not much of an objection to what I say that what I say is a cliche. My response will come quickly: it is true! Truth is a very high value. Novelty and 'originality' are much farther down on the axiological totem pole.
You see how much can be squeezed out of one slight remark made en passant by a talk show host?