Misattributed quotes

I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.

Not a Kerouac quote, but by Jon Krakauer, from his nonfiction book Into the Wild (1996). Read the full notes

Any man worth his salt will stick up for what he believes right, but it takes a slightly better man to acknowledge instantly and without reservation that he is in error.

General Peyton C. March, as quoted in Crew Resource Management for the Fire Service (2004) by Randy Okray and Thomas Lubnau II, p. 25. Read the full notes

To forgive the terrorists is up to God, but to send them to him is up to me.

"Guess what Vladimir Putin never said", The Times of India (19 November 2015) Read the full notes

Anxiety is the poison of human life ; the parent of many sins and of more miseries. – In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind? – Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?

A genuine Tryon Edwards quote on the subject of anxiety appears above in the Sourced section ( from p. 22 of A Dictionary of Thoughts. ) Read the full notes

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

This quote's origin is actually unknown (see "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime" on Wiktionary). This quotation has also been misattributed to Confucius and Guan Zhong. Read the full notes

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

Willa Cather, "Four Letters: Escapism" first published in Commonweal (17 April 1936) Read the full notes

The end [of the kingdom] of Poland!

Count L. P. de Ségur, Histoire de Frédéric-Guillaume II (Paris, 1800); Süd-Preussischen Zeitung (25 October 1794); V. Amédée Renée’s tr. of Cesare Cantu’s Storia di cento anni—Histoire de cent ans (Paris, 1852), vol. 1, p. 419n; W. F. H… Read the full notes

The only religion I respect is Islam. The only prophet I admire is the Prophet Muhammad.

Found in George Michael's 2006 book, The Enemy of My Enemy, and also in Jake Neuman's 2015 book, Islam Sharia Law and Jihad are Treason. Read the full notes

Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.

This comes from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, part 1, chapter 1. Read the full notes

Think of your forefathers! Think of your posterity!

John Quincy Adams, his son, in a speech at Plymouth, Massachusetts (1802-12-22). Read the full notes

If I had a hammer,
I'd hammer in the morning
I'd hammer in the evening,
All over this land.

"If I Had A Hammer" (1949) Though Seeger composed the music of this song the lyrics were actually written by fellow member of The Weavers, Lee Hays. Read the full notes

An education isn't how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It's being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don't. It's knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it's knowing how to use the information once you get it.

The first two sentences of this statement first appear as attributed to France in the 1990s, but the full statement is earlier attributed to William Feather, as quoted in Telephony, Vol. 150 (1956), p. 23 Read the full notes

Life is too short, and Proust is too long.

Apparently an invention by Maurice Sachs; see discussion in Quotes about Proust. Read the full notes

Nothing important happened today.

It is widely believed that George III wrote this in his diary on July 4, 1776, the day the United States of America declared independence from Great Britain. In fact, this was made up by the scriptwriters of the series The X Files, as… Read the full notes

[Israel] must see the sword as the main, if not the only, instrument with which to keep its morale high and to retain its moral tension. Toward this end it may, no — it must — invent dangers, and to do this it must adopt the method of provocation-and-revenge...

We do not need a security pact with the U.S.: such a pact will only constitute an obstacle for us. We face no danger at all of an Arab advantage of force for the next 8-10 years. Even if they receive massive military aid from the West, we… Read the full notes

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy, to deny a man the liberty he hath by nature upon a supposition that he may abuse it.

Oliver Cromwell, letter to Walter Dundas, 12 September 1650; this is also a recent misattribution. Read the full notes

A joke is a very serious thing.

Sometimes attributed to Winston Churchill, it is in fact a slight misquote of "A joke's a very serious thing" from the 1763 poem "The Ghost" by Charles Churchill. Read the full notes

I am not the president of all the Chileans. I am not a hypocrite that says so.

Citied in Jonathan Haslam's "The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende's Chile" Read the full notes

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

Commonly quoted on many websites, this quotation is actually from an address by President Gerald Ford to the US Congress (12 August 1974) Read the full notes

In this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

Francis Bacon, in The Advancement of Learning (1605) Book II, xx, 8. Read the full notes