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.
Character is what God and the angels know of us; reputation is what men and women think of us.
I have the reputation of being of good moral character. But you know reputation is what people think of us, while character is what God and the angels know of us, and that I don't want to tell. | Anonymous Boston woman, as quoted in… Read the full notes
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Misattributed to Confucius since at least 1985; correct origins are dubious, as mentioned in "Choose a Job You Love, and You Will Never Have To Work a Day in Your Life" at QuoteInvestigator.com (2 September 2014): the oldest… Read the full notes
If we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world.
If we used a different vocabulary or if we spoke a different language, we would perceive a somewhat different world. | Randy Allen Harris, in Rhetoric and Incommensurability (2005), p. 35, and an endnote on p. 138 indicates the… Read the full notes
This quote, frequently attributed to Aquinas, is actually a paraphrase of a passage (itself an elaborate paraphrase of Augustine) by Ptolemy of Lucca in his continuation of an unfinished work by Aquinas. The passage from Ptolemy reads… Read the full notes
Misattributed to Samuel Adams as early as 1990. Also misattributed to John Adams. Actually originates with Diane Ackerman, who, in an article on Samuel Adams, "The Man Who Made a Revolution", published in the September 6, 1987 issue of the… Read the full notes
ὅμως δὲ καὶ ἐν τούτοις διαλάμπει τὸ καλόν, ἐπειδὰν φέρῃ τις εὐκόλως πολλὰς καὶ μεγάλας ἀτυχίας, μὴ δι᾽ ἀναλγησίαν, ἀλλὰ γεννάδας ὢν καὶ μεγαλόψυχος. εἰ δ᾽ εἰσὶν αἱ ἐνέργειαι κύριαι τῆς ζωῆς, καθάπερ εἴπομεν, οὐδεὶς ἂν γένοιτο τῶν μακαρίων… Read the full notes
Reported in various works including Eugene C. Gerhart, Quote It Completely!: World Reference Guide to More Than 5,500 Memorable Quotes from Law and Literature (1998), p. 113, which cites the quote to MENCKEN, HL, A New Dictionary of… Read the full notes
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics". Read the full notes
As quoted in Maxed Out : Hard Times, Easy Credit, and the Era of Predatory Lenders (2007) by James D. Scurlock; The quote does not appear in any of Acton's published writings. Ezra Pound attributes the exact quotation to Sir Alexander… Read the full notes
I fear the day when the technology overlaps with our humanity. The world will only have a generation of idiots. | I fear the day when technology overlaps our humanity. It will be then that the world will have permanent ensuing generations… Read the full notes
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot.
A variation on a quotation of Alexander Pope, attributed to Einstein in various recent sources, such as Marvin Minsky's The Emotion Machine (2006), p. 176, and at the start of the 2006 pilot episode of the television series Eureka. The… Read the full notes
Stein's book is the earliest published source located with that precise version of the quote, but the quote can be found in earlier Usenet posts such as this one from 1995, and other published variants of the quote using the words "sacred… Read the full notes
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run. | Adlai Stevenson II, Address at Princeton University, "The Educated Citizen" (22 March 1954). This has also been paraphrased… Read the full notes
We will hang the capitalists with the rope that they sell us.
Often attributed to Stalin and Marx, according to the book, They Never Said It (1989), p. 64, the phrase derives from a rumour that Lenin said this to one of his close associates, Grigori Zinoviev, not long after a meeting of the Politburo… Read the full notes
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens you can bet it was planned that way.
Yes, we are on our way back — not just by pure chance, my friends, not just by a turn of the wheel, of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we are planning it that way. Don't let anybody tell you differently. Read the full notes
Q: What's wrong with the world? A: I am.
Purportedly a response by Chesterton to the question posed around 1910 by the Times of London (along with other luminaries), but biographer Kevin Belmonte, in 'Defiant Joy: the Remarkable Life & Impact of G.K. Chesterton', was unable to… Read the full notes
Paraphrased and misattributed, actually from "Die Musik des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und ihre Pflege: Methode der Musik" ("The Music of the Nineteenth Century, and its Culture") by Adolf Bernhard Marx: "Die Kunst ist stets und überall das… Read the full notes
This was a widely published anonymous derivative of Psalm 23 which arose in the early 1970s on wall-posters, plaques and t-shirts, with an early variant also reading "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I shall… Read the full notes
We were sitting one morning two Summers ago, Ferenc Molnár, Dr. Rudolf Kommer and I, in the little garden of a coffee-house in the Austrian Tyrol. “Your writing?” we asked him. “How do you regard it?” Languidly he readjusted the inevitable… Read the full notes
Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu among many other military thinkers and leaders believed in fate and determination from the correct application of theory, the state of the opponent's and one's own power, and a code for the general and a code for the soldier to… Read the full notes