These lines are used almost unaltered ("holds" becoming "does hold") in Act III, sc. ii of Buckingham's The Restauration, an adaptation of Philaster. They appear with an attribution to Buckingham in many 19th century collections of… 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.
the rate of increase of inflation is decreasing
Often attributed to Nixon, this is a slight misquote of a second-hand account of what he said. "In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting… Read the full notes
The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions.
In fact, from a "Valedictory Address, delivered to the Graduating Class of the Bellevue Hospital College" in 1871 by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr, reprinted in the New York Medical Journal 13 (April 1871): 426. Read the full notes
Care about people's approval and you will be their prisoner.
Also: "If you care what people think, you will always be their prisoner" | Appears in Stephen Mitchell's rendering into English of Tao Te Ching chapter 9; but this is an interpretation of Mitchell's which does not appear in the original… Read the full notes
Very common online pop-psychological slogan which has been traced no further than a graduation speech to students at San Francisco University High School given by Bill Bullard, who within the speech attributes it to George Eliot. For the… Read the full notes
A professor is one who talks in someone else's sleep.
Attributed in Evan Esar and Nicolas Bentley, The Treasury of Humorous Quotations (1951). Auden was repeating an anonymous joke and did not claim to have originated it. See: Edward Mendelson, "Who Wrote Auden's Definition of a Professor?"… Read the full notes
Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.
Attributed to Winston Churchill in The Prodigal Project : Book I : Genesis (2003) by Ken Abraham and Daniel Hart, p. 224 and other places, though no source attribution is given. It actually derives from an advertising campaign for… Read the full notes
Of such attributions to Napoleon, there is little credence, as stated by William Irvine in Madam I'm Adam and Other Palindromes (1987): "The well-known ABLE WAS I, ERE I SAW ELBA, for example, is conveniently attributed to Napoleon, whose… Read the full notes
The NHS will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.
Food for Ravens by Marc Karlin. Read the full notes
"This going into Europe will not turn out to be the thrilling mutual exchange supposed. It is more like nine middle aged couples with failing marriages meeting in a darkened bedroom in a Brussels hotel for a group grope." - E.P. Thompson… Read the full notes
See the Positive Atheism site on the extreme unlikelihood of this quote being authentic. It actually contains some known phrases of Jefferson's, but they are compounded with almost certainly false statements into a highly misrepresentative… Read the full notes
To understand everything is to forgive everything.
This is generally reported as a French proverb, and one familiar as such in Russia as well, in many 19th and 20th century works; it seems to have first become attributed to Gautama Buddha without citation of sources in Farm Journal, Vol… Read the full notes
Sacred cows make the tastiest hamburger.
An earlier version is "Sacred cows make great hamburgers", recorded as an anonymous saying in Encyclopedia of Graffiti (1974) by Robert George Reisner and Lorraine Wechsler. | There are earlier instances of essentially this quote. In the… Read the full notes
Since it is possible that thou mayest depart from life this very moment, regulate every act and thought accordingly. But to go away from among men, if there are gods, is not a thing to be afraid of, for the gods will not involve thee in… Read the full notes
καὶ τὸ μὲν οὖν σαφὲς οὔτις ἀνὴρ γένετ᾿ οὐδέ τις ἔσται εἰδὼς ἀμφὶ θεῶν τε καὶ ἅσσα λέγω περὶ πάντων· εἰ γὰρ καὶ τὰ μάλιστα τύχοι τετελεσμένον εἰπών, αὐτὸς ὅμως οὐκ οἶδε· δόκος δ᾿ ἐπὶ πᾶσι τέτυκται. | And thus there has never been any man… Read the full notes
Nuclear power is a hell of a way to boil water.
Commonly quoted on the internet, this quote is actually from Karl Grossman, via his 1980 book Cover Up: What You are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power (p. 155; freely available online via its publisher; see PDF page 187). Read the full notes
Diplomacy is the same as saying "nice doggie" until you have a chance to pick up a rock.
Other variants also attributed to Wynn Catlin in Kiss Me Hardy: Quotations Ancient and (Very) Modern (1982) by Roger Kilroy; and to Winston Churchill by Dick Applegate in a speech reprinted in Volume 75 of "The Carpenter" (1955) Read the full notes
a heart is not judged by how much you love but by how much you are loved by others
this is a line spoken by Frank Morgan's depiction of the Wizard of Oz in the 1939 film, which debuted 20 years after Baum's death. It did not actually appear in the "Wonderful Wizard of Oz". The ending of "Steam Engines of Oz" wrongly… Read the full notes
History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.
Actual quote is | For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all Parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history. | Speech in the House of Commons (January 23, 1948); Cited in The Yale… Read the full notes
Investigations have failed to confirm this in Emerson's writings (John H. Lienhard. "A better moustrap", Engines of our Ingenuity). Also reported as a misattribution in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of… Read the full notes