Misattributed quotes

According to Pierre Pierrard, this was attributed to Veuillot by Montalambert, and Veuillot protested he did not say it.

Also appears in the form "Quand je suis le plus faible, je vous demande la liberté parce que tel est votre principe ; mais quand je suis le plus fort, je vous l’ôte, parce que tel est le mien" | Misattributed to Veuillot in The Wall of… Read the full notes

Knowledge may give weight, but accomplishments give lustre, and many more people see than weigh.

Actually a quotation from a letter of Lord Chesterfield dated May 8, 1750. Read the full notes

It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the 'right' to education, the 'right' to health care, the 'right' to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

P. J. O'Rourke, Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut‎ (1996), p. 227. Read the full notes

The devil...the prowde spirit...cannot endure to be mocked.

Thomas More, quoted at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters Read the full notes

Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.

Actually from a 2008 article on huffpost.com in which the author discusses an explanation given by a therapist friend. The quote has since been attributed to Fanon's Black Skin, White Masks on the internet as well as a few published books… Read the full notes

Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.

This derives from a folk proverb sometimes attributed to Clementine Paddleford, but in use as an "old proverb" as early as 1908, when Paddeford was only 10 years old. Read the full notes

Silence is the wit of fools, and one of the virtues of the wise.

Bernard de Bonnard, "Le Silence," L'Almanach des Muses (1776) Read the full notes

Any education that matters is liberal. All the saving truths, all the healing graces that distinguish a good education from a bad one or a full education from a half-empty one are contained in that word.

Alan Simpson (b. 1912), an English born educator who became a U.S. citizen in 1954, in "The Marks of an Educated Man" in Readings for Liberal Education (1962), edited by by Louis Glenn Locke, William Merriam Gibson, and George Warren Arms… Read the full notes

Accept everything about yourself — I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end — no apologies, no regrets.

Clark Moustakas, as quoted in Sacred Simplicities: Meeting the Miracles in Our Lives (2004) by Lori Knutson, p. 141 Read the full notes

Variant: The Church says that the Earth is Flat, but I know that it is Round. For I have seen its Shadow on the Moon and I have more Faith in a Shadow than in the Church.

It is a blessed thing that in every age some one has had individuality enough and courage enough to stand by his own convictions, — some one who had the grandeur to say his say. I believe it was Magellan who said, "The church says the… Read the full notes

How prudently most men creep into nameless graves, while now and then one or two forget themselves into immortality.

Actually said by Wendell Phillips, on the murder of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, which occurred on November 7, 1837. Read the full notes

Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
"You owe me."
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.

From Daniel Ladinsky, The Gift: Poems by Hafiz (1999), p. 34. This is not a translation or interpretation of any poem by Hafez; it is an original poem by Ladinsky inspired by the spirit of Hafez in a dream. Read the full notes

A certain amount of opposition is a great help to a man. Kites rise against, not with, the wind. Even a head wind is better than none. No man ever worked his passage anywhere in a dead calm.

John Neal, as quoted in The Journal of Education for Upper Canada Vol. III (1850) Read the full notes

Luck is probability taken personally.

Often repeated by Penn Jillette, who attributes this quote to Chip Denman. Read the full notes

Men are like steel — when they lose their temper, they lose their worth.

Though often attributed to Norris, this seems to have appeared as an anonymous proverb at least as early as 1961, in an edition of The Physical Educator Read the full notes

Styles change, style doesn't.

Styles, like everything else, change. Style doesn't. - Linda Ellerbee, Move On: Adventures in the Real World (1991), p. 35 G.P. Putnam's Sons ISBN 0399136231 Read the full notes

The Muscogee was once a mighty people. The Georgians trembled at your war-whoop, and the maidens of my tribe, on the distant lakes, sung the prowess of your warriors and sighed for their embraces. Now your very blood is white; your tomahawks have no edge; your bows and arrows were buried with your fathers. Oh! Muscogees, brethren of my mother, brush from your eyelids the sleep of slavery; once more strike for vengeance; once more for your country. The spirits of the mighty dead complain. Their tears drop from the weeping skies. Let the white race perish! They seize your land, they corrupt your women, they trample on your dead! Back! whence they came, upon a trail of blood, they must be driven! Back! back — ay, into the great water whose accursed waves brought them to our shores! Burn their dwellings! Destroy their stock! Slay their wives and children! The red man owns the country, and the pale-face must never enjoy it! War now! War forever! War upon the living! War upon the dead! Dig their very corpses from the graves! Our country must give no rest to the white man's bones.

Speech to the Creek people, quoted in Great Speeches by Native Americans by Robert Blaisdel. This quote appeared in J. F H. Claiborne, Life and Times of Gen. Sam Dale, the Mississippi Partisan (Harper, New York, 1860). However, historian… Read the full notes

The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn.

Martin Luther, quoted at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters Read the full notes

Faith is a passionate intuition

Garbled version of c. l 1295 of Despondency Corrected (Vol. 5 of W's Poetical Works on Gurenberg) Read the full notes

[President Bush should] quit hiding behind the Secret Service, come out and face the nation and explain his failure to protect the country.

Attributed as an on-air remark (11 September 2001), but fabricated by Lt. Gen. Billy M. Thomas (ret). Discussed and later denied by radio host Rush Limbaugh. Read the full notes