"Your manuscript is both good and original. ..." at The Samuel Johnson Sound Bite Page Retrieved 2013-07-07 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.
I cannot tell a lie, I did it with my little hatchet.
The earliest source of this quote was a famous anecdote in The Life of George Washington, with Curious Anecdotes Laudable to Himself and Exemplary to his Countrymen (1806) by Parson Weems, which is not considered a credible source, and… Read the full notes
In American Character, a 1905 address by Brander Matthews, a similar quotation is attributed to L. P. Jacks (link). | ""Our civilization is a perilous adventure for an uncertain prize... Human society is not a constructed thing but a human… Read the full notes
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
The earliest known appearance of this quote in print is Walter J. Savitch, Pascal: An Introduction to the Art and Science of Programming (1984), where it is attributed as a "remark overheard at a computer science conference". It circulated… Read the full notes
For behavior, men learn it, as they take diseases, one of another.
In an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Solitude and Society" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, (December 1857), p. 228, this follows a statement clearly attributed to Bacon, which might be a paraphrase. Without explicit citation, this is… Read the full notes
A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.
This seems to have been first attributed to Franklin in The New Age Magazine Vol. 66 (1958), and the earliest appearance of it yet located is in Coronet magazine, Vol. 34 (1953), p. 27, where it was attributed to a Louise Stein; it thus… Read the full notes
Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
A related quote is in James's Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907) (see above): "Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered… Read the full notes
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
A quotation from Igor Stravinsky, not Auden. Attributed to Auden through a misreading of a paragraph in Robert Craft's Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972) p. 6 (The antecedent of "he" is unmistakably… Read the full notes
Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.
Let us admire all-powerful Nature, which is not so easily brought into this serious and lasting disorder by our perverse intrusions; for otherwise, there would hardly have remained a human being alive. | Christian Charles Schieferdecker… Read the full notes
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Il y a quelque chose de plus puissant que la force brutale des baïonnettes: c'est l'idée dont le temps est venu et l'heure est sonnée. | There is something more powerful than the brute force of bayonets: it is the idea whose time has come… Read the full notes
The lack of money is the root of all evil.
The earliest citation found in Google Books is a 1872 article by Richard Bowker: "Our Crime Against Crimes", in The Herald of Health, vol. 19 no. 2, New York: Wood & Holbrook, February 1872. The saying is placed within quotation marks… Read the full notes
Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.
Twain did say | "There is a sumptuous variety about the New England weather that compels the stranger's admiration — and regret. The weather is always doing something there ... In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six… Read the full notes
A man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure.
Attributed to her in Commons debates, 2003-07-02, column 407 and Commons debates, 2004-06-15 column 697. According to a letter to the Daily Telegraph by Alistair Cooke on 2 November 2006, this sentiment originated with Loelia Ponsonby, one… Read the full notes
Defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies.
The remark has often been attributed to Voltaire and to Claude-Louis-Hector de Villars. Read the full notes
A little science estranges men from God, but much science leads them back to Him.
This alleged quotation is attributed to Pasteur at least as early as 1952, in Miracles, by Morvan Lebesque. A similar quotation reportedly appeared in a Pittsburgh Observer letter, written by Monsignor Joseph Guillot about Pasteur, which… Read the full notes
Exercise till the mind feels delight in reposing from the fatigue.
First appearance on google books is C. Edwards Lester's 1845 English translation of Ansaldo Ceba's book Il Cittadino di Repubblica, translated as The Citizen of a Republic, which on p. 92 says "Moderate exercise is also indispensable; its… Read the full notes
Do what is right, though the world may perish.
This is quoted as Kant in Building Academic Language: Essential Practices for Content Classrooms, Grades 5-12 (2007) by Jeff Zwiers, p. 202, but apparently derives from Kant's arguments in support of the far older Latin proverb Fiat… Read the full notes
This quote is frequently misattributed to Irving. The earliest instance it could be located was in an article that was published by The American Masonic Register on February 6, 1841. Here, the quote was not attributed to anyone. In 1845… Read the full notes
Giorgio de Santillana attributed this remark to the Dialogue in The Crime of Galileo (1955), but it does not appear there. A vaguely similar exchange appears in the Fourth Day of the Dialogue, when Salviati asks Simplicio why he resorts to… Read the full notes
Democracy is the most vile form of government.
Not in Madison's writings. The phrase is commonly prefixed to a genuine passage from Federalist No. 10, where Madison refers only to "a pure democracy": "such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention..." The… Read the full notes