Misattributed quotes

Responsibilities gravitate to the person who can shoulder them.

Elbert Hubbard, "J.B. Runs Things," Short Stories and Index: Elbert Hubbard's Selected Writings, Part 14 (1923) [Kessinger Publishing, 1998, ISBN 0766103978], p. 278 Read the full notes

If you give us the chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels

Earlier use in Frank and Ernest (c. 1982), by Bob Thaves, as the characters observe a billboard for a "Fred Astaire Film Festival: "Sure he was great, but don't forget that Ginger Rogers did everything that he did… backwards and in high… Read the full notes

Good temper is one of the great preservers of the features.

This is from Hazlitt's "Conversations of James Northcote, Esq., R.A.," New Monthly Magazine (1826-1827), published in book form in 1830; but the words were spoken by Northcote Read the full notes

Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when He did not want to sign.

Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu, quand il ne veut pas signer. — Théophile Gautier, La Croix de Berny (1845), letter III: Edgard Meilhan au Prince de Monbert Read the full notes

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

A translation of one of La Rochefoucauld's maxims, published posthumously in 1693. In the original: "Force gens veulent être dévots, mais personne ne veut être humble." Read the full notes

The beloved of the Almighty are: the rich who have the humility of the poor, and the poor who have the magnanimity of the rich.

Saadi as translated in The Gulistān : Or, Rose-garden, of Shek̲h̲ Muslihu'd-dīn Sādī of Shīrāz as translated by Edward Backhouse Eastwick (1880), p. 203 Read the full notes

May love be your guide in every moment of your life.

Though widely attributed to Coelho on the internet, and originally added here within the section for The Alchemist, this specific form has not been located in any editions available in online searches. The directive "Let love be your… Read the full notes

Opportunity is like a bald-headed man with only a patch of hair right in front. You have to grab that hair, grasp the opportunity while it's confronting you, else you'll be grasping a slick bald head.

This seems to be a paraphrase sumarizing a speech at the Carrie Tuggle Institute, Birmingham, as described in Thinking Black: Some of the Nation's Best Black Columnists Speak Their Mind (1997) by DeWayne Wickham Read the full notes

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

François Fénelon, in Selections from the Writings of Fenelon: With an appendix, containing a Memoir of his Life (1829) as translated by A Lady (Eliza Lee Cabot Follen), Letter 37, p. 189. Read the full notes

As I began to love myself I found that anguish and emotional suffering are only warning signs that I was living against my own truth.
Today, I know, this is “AUTHENTICITY".

Quoted by many sites and blogs as "speech that Charlie Chaplin gave on his 70th birthday". Actually, a re-translation (from Portuguese-BR) of a text from the book "When I Loved Myself Enough" by Kim & Alison McMillen (2001). Read the full notes

Whatever you are, try to be a good one.

This quote is often misattributed to Lincoln. The earliest instance that Quote Investigator could locate was in an 1897 memoir published by Laurence Hutton, who attributed the quote to William Makepeace Thackeray. Read the full notes

Better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

This is usually attributed to Emiliano Zapata, but sometimes to Aeschylus, who is credited with expressing similar sentiments in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life". Read the full notes

If my critics saw me walking over the River Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.

Attributed to her in and other sources. Actually an adapted Lyndon Johnson quote "If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.'" Read the full notes

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results.

Brown did include this quote in her book Sudden Death (Bantam Books, New York, 1983), p. 68, but it appears she was just paraphrasing a quote that had already been written elsewhere. The earliest known appearance of a similar quote is the… Read the full notes

God is where you let Him in.

This expression originates with a statement of Kotzker Rebbe, who, when he was five years old asked his father "Where is God?" to which his father answered: "God is everywhere!" Rebbe then responded "No, I think God is only where you let… Read the full notes

I have travelled across the length and breadth of India and I have not seen one person who is a beggar, who is a thief. Such wealth I have seen in the country, such high moral values, people of such caliber, that I do not think we would conquer this country, unless we break the very backbone of this nation, which is her spiritual and cultural heritage, and therefore, I propose that we replace her old and ancient education system, her culture, for if the Indians think that all that is foreign and English is good and greater than their own, they will lose their self esteem, their native culture and they will become what we want them, a truly dominated nation.

Address delivered 2 February 1835 Read the full notes

A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors.

Cited to "Challenges and Strategy" (16 May 1991) via Fred Warshofsky (1994), The Patent Wars. This is a misreading of Warshofsky's text; the quotation is actually from League for Programming Freedom (1991), "Against Software Patents." An… Read the full notes

He that has once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another, than he whom you yourself have obliged.

Franklin's recognition of this effect caused it to be named after him. Wikipedia, Ben Franklin Effect. Read the full notes

The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrours, without shrinking or complaining: not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit.

General John Coffee, on American Indian fighters in the Battle of Tallushatchee, in an official report to Andrew Jackson (November 1813), as quoted in Life of Andrew Jackson (1860) by James Porton Read the full notes

All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.

William Cowper Prime in The Old House by the River (1853); first misattributed to Hawthorne in Notable Thoughts about Women: A Literary Mosaic (1882) by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 239 Read the full notes