Some of the most-shared quotes were never said by the people they are credited to. Here are the ones Wikiquote lists as misattributed, with what is known about where they really came from.
We rely on the notes and sources recorded on Wikiquote and show them next to each quote. “Misattributed” means the evidence points away from the credited person — it does not always tell us who did say it.
You beat your pate, and fancy wit will come;
Knock as you please, there's nobody at home.
Credited as Epigram: An Empty House (1727), or On a Dull Writer; alternately attributed to Jonathan Swift in John Hawkesworth, The Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin (1754), p. 265. Compare: "His wit invites you… Read the full notes
It was John Innes Clark Hare in his book "American Constitutional Law - Volume 1" who claimed that this was from Toqueville in an unsourced paraphrase that started with "It was long since remarked by De Tocqueville..." Actual quote, from… Read the full notes
The journalist Eike Christian Hirsch PhD, a personal acquaintance of Heisenberg, whom he interviewed for his 1981 book Expedition in die Glaubenswelt, claimed in de.wikiquote.org on 22 June 2015, that the content and style of the quote was… Read the full notes
Though this statement and a few other variants of it have been widely attributed to Herman Melville, it is actually a paraphrase of one found in a sermon of Henry Melvill, "Partaking in Other Men's Sins", St. Margaret's Church, Lothbury… Read the full notes
Though written in contemporary idiomatic English, this has been recently cited on the Internet on various "quotations" websites (and elsewhere) as having being written by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland [sic]. However, it does not… Read the full notes
The only thing black people can do for me is shine my shoes and buy my music.
"Tracing that rumored racial slur to its source was like running a gopher to earth", Jet wrote. Some said Presley had said it in in Boston, which Elvis had never visited. Some said it was on Edward Murrow's on which Elvis had never… Read the full notes
Equal rights for all, special privileges for none.
California Digital Newspaper Collection, Los Angeles Herald.; appears in proximity to a reference to Jefferson in the 1878 "Notes of a Voyage to California Via Cape Horn", reprinting a 1850 Sacramento advertisment | via Google Books Samuel… Read the full notes
Often attributed to Rumi, but apparently by Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr. The original poem in Farsi is: باز آ باز آ هر آنچه هستی باز آ گر کافر و گبر و بتپرستی باز آ این درگه ما درگه نومیدی نیست صد بار اگر توبه شکستی باز | Come, come, whoever… Read the full notes
Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives.
In a 1970 Congressional hearing, a version of the quote first referenced Americans. It was attributed to an unnamed Irishman. "And indeed, we often know how to do things by the philosophy that was expounded by another Irishman I know. He… Read the full notes
Diplomacy is the art of telling people to go to hell in such a way that they ask for directions
This appears to be a variation of a quote often attributed to Caskie Stinnett in 1960, "A diplomat...is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip" but which appears to have been in… Read the full notes
When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Widely attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson on the internet; however, a presumably definitive source of Emerson's works at http://www.rwe.org fails to confirm any occurrence of this phrase across his works. This phrase is found in remarks… Read the full notes
What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
As reported by Quoteinvestigator on January 11, 2011 the quote appeared in "Meditations in Wall Street" (1940) by Wall Street trader Henry Stanley Haskins, "a Wall Street trader with a checkered background. The phrase was misattributed… Read the full notes
Attributed to Henry Ford by Charles Binderup (March 19, 1937), Congressional Record—House vol. 81, p. 2528. The quote is preceded by "It was Henry Ford who said, in substance, this," indicating that it was a paraphrase rather than an… Read the full notes
To find out a girl's faults, praise her to her girl friends.
If I have never heard Ill of some Person, I always impute it to defective Intelligence; for there are none without their Faults, no, not one. If she be a Woman, I take the first Opportunity to let all her Acquaintance know I have heard… Read the full notes
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
There is no quote from the Pali Canon that matches up with any of these. The closest quote to this is in the Majjhima Nikaya 19 | "Whatever a monk keeps pursuing with his thinking & pondering, that becomes the inclination of his awareness… Read the full notes
The world is a great book, of which they that never stir from home read only a page.
Attributed to Augustine in "Select Proverbs of All Nations" (1824) by "Thomas Fielding" (John Wade), p. 216, and later in the form "The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page", as quoted in 20,000 Quips & Quotes… Read the full notes
Though Kennedy stated that he was quoting George Bernard Shaw when he said this, he is often thought to have originated the expression, which actually paraphrases a line delivered by the Serpent in Shaw's play Back To Methuselah: “You see… Read the full notes
There are causes worth dying for, but none worth killing for.
Widely attributed to Camus on the internet, the earliest attribution of such a statement to him yet located is an unsourced citation in Quotations from the Wayside (1999) by Brenda Wong: "Many things are worth dying for, but none worth… Read the full notes
A weak mind is like a microscope, which magnifies trifling things but cannot receive great ones.
Though sometimes misattributed to Chesterton, this is generally attributed to Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, with the first publication of this yet located is in a section of proverbs called "Diamond Dust" in Eliza Cook's… Read the full notes
Attributed to Goethe by William Hutchinson Murray, in his book The Scottish Himalayan Expedition (1951), this has been shown to be a misattribution at "German Myth 12: The Famous 'Goethe' Quotation", Answer.com and "Popular Quotes… Read the full notes