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.
Duty is ours; consequences are God's.
Though this was a favorite motto of Jackson, and reported as among his last words, it did not originate with him,he may have gotten it in his youth from someone who was a regular reader of "Poor Richard's" almanac. Read the full notes
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
Not a Kerouac quote, but by Allen Ginsberg in his journal of 30 July 1947. Published in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, page 199. Read the full notes
I am Joan of Arc. I am Clemenceau.
Reportedly misattributed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in January, 1943, in communicating his impression of de Gaulle's arrogance in assuming the mantle of leadership of free France. Reported in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said… Read the full notes
Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.
This is almost always attributed to US Ambassador Francis Meehan, though without citations, and only very rarely to Patton. Read the full notes
Atwood H. Townsend, editor of Good Reading, various editions from at least 1960 Read the full notes
Beauty is the promise of happiness.
Actually by Stendhal: "La beauté n'est que la promesse du bonheur" (Beauty is no more than the promise of happiness), in De L'Amour (1822), chapter 17 Read the full notes
Bristow hasn't hit it yet. What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.
John E. Brown, Woodrow Wilson's Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall and the Wilson Administration, 1913-1921, (PhD. dissertation, Ball State University, 1970), p. 216. | Jeffrey Graf, Herman B Wells Library Indiana University Bloomington… Read the full notes
We had quitters during the Revolution too... we called them "Kentuckians."
This attribution apparently originated with a statement of a cartoon version of Washington on an episode of The Simpsons. Though not initially presented as a genuine quote this has sometimes been attributed to Washington. Read the full notes
The Optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds, the Pessimist fears it is true.
This is derived from a statement of James Branch Cabell, in The Silver Stallion (1926) : The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. Read the full notes
When the United States gets fascism, it will call it anti-fascism.
Originally reported by Robert Cantrell. However, years later Cantrell told Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. that it was his own summary of his conversation with Long, not Long's exact words. See: Paul F. Boller and John H. George, They Never Said… Read the full notes
To do two things at once is to do neither.
Duos qui sequitur lepores neutrum capit | He who follows two hares catches neither. | A Dictionary of Quotations in most frequent Use, David Evans Macdonnel, 1797, quoted in The Monthly Review, 1798, p. 467 | Apparently of medieval or… Read the full notes
I revelled in the keen analysis of William James, Josiah Royce and young George Santayana.
The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (1968) Read the full notes
Harry Pepner, as quoted in Chicken Soup for the Soul : Stories for a Better World (2005) by Jack Canfield, p. 2 Read the full notes
Truly from Seneca the Younger, in De Ira, Book III, Chapter V: Aut potentior te aut inbecillior laesit: si inbecillior, parce illi, si potentior, tibi. Read the full notes
The big joke on democracy is that it gives its mortal enemies the tools to its own destruction.
Appears to actually be written by Hans Schwarz van Berk in a chapter introduction for a 1935 compilation of Der Angriff articles by Goebbels. (Der Angriff, Aufsätze aus der Kampfzeit, p. 61) Read the full notes
Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't.
Often attributed to Thatcher, but originally said by Jesse Carr, head of Teamsters Union Local, in Newsweek, Vol. 88 (1976), p. 77 Read the full notes
Moral issues are always terribly complex for someone without principles.
A popular internet misattribution, also attributed (without source) to Chesterton in several books. Read the full notes
. Additionally there is no record of this prayer before the twentieth century. | . Dr. Christian Renoux of the University of Orleans in France traces the origin of the prayer to an anonymous 1912 contributor to La Clochette, a publication… Read the full notes
"And into the forest I go, to lose my mind and find my soul."
Once again, this is far from Muir's style of writing. The quote does not come up in any search of John Muir's Journals or his published texts on the John Muir Exhibit website. It is most commonly put on t-shirts - never in any scholarly… Read the full notes
A god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature.
Isaac Newton: Principia Mathematica (1687); Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy, Rule IV Read the full notes