Attributed to Emerson in Life's Instructions for Wisdom, Success, and Happiness (2000) by H. Jackson Brown Jr., as well as numerous online sources since, the article "The Purpose of Life Is Not To Be Happy But To Matter" at the Quote… Read the full notes
Misattributed quotes
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.
Good artists copy; great artists steal.
This is a favorite phrase of Jobs, but he is (mis)quoting Pablo Picasso. "Lesser artists borrow; great artists steal" is similarly attributed to Igor Stravinsky, but both sayings may well originate in T. S. Eliot's dictum: "Immature poets… Read the full notes
The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.
Original, with literal English translation (from p. 276 of Selections from the Prison Notebooks) | La crisi consiste appunto nel fatto che il vecchio muore e il nuovo non può nascere: in questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi… Read the full notes
Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.
As per research conducted by Quote Investigator, more than 25 years before its first in-print attribution to Marx, on April 5, 1973 (as "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. That's because inside a dog it's too dark to read")… Read the full notes
Although you inherited the Chinese Empire on horseback, you cannot rule it from that position.
See also "Societies and cultures in world history" (1995), by Mark Kishlansky et al, pg 326. | The saying was originally uttered by Confucian philosopher Lu Jia (陸賈; died 170 BC), to Emperor Gaozu (256 or 247 – 1 June 195 BC), founder of… Read the full notes
Origin unknown. Attributed to Sydney Smith in Speaker's Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955) by Herbert Prochnow, p. 190. Variant reported in Why Are You Single? (1949) by Hilda Holland, p. 49: «When asked by a young man whether to… Read the full notes
If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.
Similarly, in Einstein and the Poet by William Hermanns, p. 86, Einstein is quoted saying the following in a 1948 interview: "If I should be born again, I will become a cobbler and do my thinking in peace." Read the full notes
Attributed to Einstein in Treasury of the Christian Faith (1949) p. 415 books.google, and subsequently repeated in other books. No original source where Einstein supposedly said this has been located, and it is absent from authoritative… Read the full notes
The actual author of this quote is Roger J. Corless, from his book "The Vision of Buddhism: the Space Under the Tree". The original quote is, "We make ourselves miserable by first closing ourselves off from reality and then collecting this… Read the full notes
The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it.
This has been attributed to Orwell on the internet, but the earliest source citing him as author appears to be a post from Jsnip4 on the RealistNews.net forum (15 February 2011). Prior to this, the statement occurred, without attribution… Read the full notes
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.
Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo's Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death. Read the full notes
The quote seems to have spread first in German, then in English. In German, the quote appeared in right-wing extremist circles in the mid-90s, possibly for the first time in 1995 in the far-right weekly newspaper "Der Schlesier". | In… Read the full notes
Give them a whiff of grapeshot.
This is often quoted as a command Napoleon issued when dispersing mobs marching on the National Assembly in Paris (5 October 1795), or it is occasionally stated that he boasted "I gave them a whiff of grapeshot" sometime afterwards, but… Read the full notes
One man with courage makes a majority.
Attributed to Jackson by Robert F. Kennedy in his "Foreword" to the "Young Readers Memorial Edition" of John F. Kennedy's Profiles in Courage, and by Ronald Reagan in nominating Robert Bork to the US Supreme Court, this has never been… Read the full notes
"George Patton’s last words to us before we left Africa came home with meaning: 'No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.'" [address by Patton… Read the full notes
Sometimes credited to Jack Kerouac, from his book The Dharma Bums. It is not a quote by Kerouac. It first appeared as a very brief description of The Dharma Bums in Esquire's list of "The 80 Best Books Every Man Should Read" in 2010… Read the full notes
George Sweeting Living in a Dying World (1972), p. 59 | Related: "...only 50 years after his death the Geneva Bible Society used his press and house to produce stacks of Bibles." | Geisler, Norman L. and Nix, William E., A General… Read the full notes
Words of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, quoted by Haile Selassie in an address during the Indian President's state visit to Ethiopia (13 October 1965), quoted in Foreign Affairs Record Vol. 11-12 (1965-1966) by India Ministry of External… Read the full notes
Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.
H. W. Shaw (Josh Billings), as quoted in Scientific American, Vol. 31 (1874), p. 121, and in dictionaries of quotations such as Excellent Quotations for Home and School (1890) by Julia B. Hoitt, p. 117 and Many Thoughts of Many Minds: A… Read the full notes
Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.
Resembles an ironic aphorism cited by Langworth from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as 19th-century English naval tradition, "Ashore it's wine, women and song; aboard it's rum, bum and concertina" or variously "... rum, bum and bacca… Read the full notes