Friedrich Schiller. As quoted by Baruch in his Foreword to the 1932 edition of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841), by Charles Mackay. 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.
Never go to bed angry, stay up and fight.
Phyllis Diller, as quoted in Getting Through to the Man You Love : The No-Nonsense, No-Nagging Guide for Women (1999) by Michele Weiner-Davis, p. 151 Read the full notes
Religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who know they have been there — perhaps through involvement with religion. | The next variant located is ascribed to an anonymous member of Alcoholics… Read the full notes
Fear is the true enemy, the only enemy.
Attributed implicitly to Sun Tzu by "William Riker" in the episode The Last Outpost of the TV program Star Trek: The Next Generation, but no source for this quote predates the episode's airing in 1987. Read the full notes
Christian Nestell Bovee, in Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862), Volume I, p. 124 Read the full notes
James Truslow Adams; sometimes rendered: "There are two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live". Read the full notes
Lloyd George is portrayed as saying this, as George Nathaniel Curzon was making a complaint against Raymond Poincaré in the Turkish TV series, Kurtuluş (1994), but no prior citation of such a statement has yet been found. Read the full notes
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, as quoted in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1893) by James Wood, p. 32 Read the full notes
Duty makes us do things well, but love makes us do them beautifully.
Ziglar has often used this saying, but it originates with Phillips Brooks, as quoted in Primary Education (1916) by Elizabeth Peabody. Read the full notes
Ringo isn't even the best drummer in the Beatles.
Often apocryphally and jokingly attributed to Lennon in an interview where he was asked whether fellow Beatle Ringo Starr was the best drummer in the world. Read the full notes
This quote has been misattributed to Aristotle for a long time. A translation of the "Politics" of Heinrich von Treitschke published in 1916 (Dugden and De Bille) refers to "the time-honored truth, laid down by Aristotle, that the greatest… Read the full notes
Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.
Not Burke but Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table (1858). Read the full notes
The Owl and the Nightingale, line 1223; as translated by Brian Stone in The Owl and the Nightingale, Cleanness, St. Erkenwald (1971), p. 224. Read the full notes
Words spoken by an actor portraying Young in the movie September Dawn, an account of the Mountain Meadows massacre. This exact statement has not been attributed to a known source, and may be a paraphrase of a statement made by Young on… Read the full notes
They that touch pitch will be defiled.
Actually spoken by Dogberry in William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing (III.3). The KJV Bible (Ecclesiasticus 13:1) has "He that toucheth pitch shall be defiled therewith". Read the full notes
If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.
"That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be." — P. C. Hodgell, in her 1994 novel Seeker's Mask. Read the full notes
No contemporaneous or primary source for this statement has been found. Its earliest located publication is the advocacy column "The US–Israel Saga" by Yoram Ettinger (11 May 2005); Michael Oren repeated it in Foreign Policy (25 April… Read the full notes
Commonly attributed to Twain in computer contexts and post-2000 inspirational books — the first sentence has also been attributed to Agatha Christie and Sally Berger. Read the full notes
Written by Henry Stuber as part of a biographical sketch of Franklin appended to a 1793 edition of Franklin's autobiography and sometimes reprinted with it in the 19th century. It is frequently misattributed to Franklin himself. Read the full notes
They were a people so primitive they did not know how to get money, except by working for it.
Attributed to Addison in (K)new Words: Redefine Your Communication (2005), by Gloria Pierre, p. 120, there are no indications of such a statement in Addison's writings. Read the full notes