Misattributed quotes

The "divinity" of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity.

Mystery is made a convenient cover for absurdity. (13 February 1756) | Where do we find a precept in the Gospel requiring Ecclesiastical Synods? Convocations? Councils? Decrees? Creeds? Confessions? Oaths? Subscriptions? and whole… Read the full notes

We need to change the whole capitalist system

Samira Ahmed may have been thinking of a Thunberg quote from section 4.1 which did indict "capitalist consumerism", though it also criticized other "current political ideologies": "Leaving capitalist consumerism and market economics as the… Read the full notes

Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.

Often attributed to Twain online, but unsourced. Alternate source: "The whole principle [of censorship] is wrong. It's like demanding that grown men live on skim milk because the baby can't have steak." — Robert Heinlein, The Man Who Sold… Read the full notes

Don't explain your philosophy. Embody it.

Has been ascribed to Epictetus since around 2016, (e.g. on this Daily Stoic web page). It may be an attempt to summarise the start of Enchiridion 46: "On no occasion call yourself a philosopher, and do not, for the most part, talk among… Read the full notes

We do not quit playing because we grow old, we grow old because we quit playing.

Men grow old because they stop playing, and not conversely. Read the full notes

I never tire of reading Tom Paine.

Abraham Lincoln, as quoted in A Literary History of the American People‎ (1931) by Charles Angoff, p. 270. James M. Cornelius, Ph.D., the curator of the Lincoln Collection at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, says he… Read the full notes

The future ain't what it used to be.

Paul Valery (1937): "The future, like everything else, is no longer quite what it used to be.". Translated in English in 1948 in Our Destiny and Literature. Read the full notes

Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.

Attributed in Lillet Walters (2000), Secrets of Superstar Speakers; attributed in English sources as a "Japanese proverb" as early as 1924. Compare with a Japanese proverb 人を呪わば穴二つ (Hito wo norowaba ana futatsu), "Curse someone, then you… Read the full notes

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them; disagree with them; glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

Used in the Apple "Think Different" marketing campaign and sometimes attributed to Kerouac on the internet, perhaps because it evokes his famous quote from On the Road: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to… Read the full notes

I scorn their hatred, if they do but fear me.

Let them hate me so that they fear me. | Thomas Fitzherbert, The First Part of a Treatise concerning Policy and Religion, 2nd ed. (1615) pp. 307, 374 | Let them hate me, as long as they're afraid of me. | Clive Foss, The Tyrants: 2500… Read the full notes

Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Actually a statement by American advertising executive and author Howard W. Newton (1903–1951); attributions to Isaac are relatively recent, those to Howard date at least to Sylva Vol. 1-3 (1945), p. 57, where it is cited to an earlier… Read the full notes

The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only—and that is to support the ultimate career.

Paraphrased from a letter C. S. Lewis wrote to Mrs. Johnson on March 16, 1955: "A housewife's work [is] surely, in reality, the most important work in the world . . . your job is the one for which all others exist", as reported in The… Read the full notes

Be careful to trust a person who does not like wine.

Written in a letter to Francois Lafargue in Bordeaux, 12 November 1866 as published in MECW Volume 42, p. 334. as "That a man who does not love wine will never be good for anything," which was a restating of the phrase wine, women and song… Read the full notes

We have just lost the South for a generation. or, sometimes quoted as

Very widely quoted as an aside to an aide, upon signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For example, in a speech by Barack Obama at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2014. However, the The Guardian contacted journalist Bill Moyers, an… Read the full notes

It's true I'm here, and I'm just as strange as you.

This is usually attributed to the Diary of Frida Kahlo, which does not contain the quotation. As explained on the Quote Investigator website, a postcard containing the quotation and a portion of a photo of Frida Kahlo was sent anonymously… Read the full notes

When small men begin to cast big shadows, it means that the sun is about to set.

Frequently attributed to Lin Yutang (such as in Hard-to-Solve Cryptograms (2001) by Derrick Niederman, p. 96) Actually a variation of a Walter Savage Landor quotation from his work Imaginary Conversations: "Little men in lofty places, who… Read the full notes

The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George the III and the international bankers was the PRIME reason for the Revolutionary War.

The refusal of King George to allow the colonies to operate an honest money system, which freed the ordinary man from clutches of the money manipulators was probably the prime cause of the revolution. | The refusal of King George to allow… Read the full notes

That which is not forbidden is mandatory.

This has become a common phrase among quantum scientists, and is often attributed to Gell-Mann, but no citations of original source has yet been located; it is seems to have been derived from the assertion made in the ant-colony of The… Read the full notes

Fortune rarely accompanies anyone to the door.

This is sometimes said to be by Torquato Tasso, and sometimes to be a quotation from Goethe's verse play Torquato Tasso, but it is from Joseph Jacobs' translation of Baltasar Gracián's Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia , maxim no. 59. In… Read the full notes

When love and skill work together, expect a masterpiece.

This is actually from Put Yourself in His Place by Charles Reade. Read the full notes