Misattributed quotes

George [H. W. Bush] brought his ne'er-do-well son around this morning and asked me to find the kid a job. Not the political one who lives in Florida. The one who hangs around here all the time looking shiftless. This so-called kid is already almost 40 and has never had a real job.

Cited to a Reagan diary entry in 1986, but actually from a parody written by Michael Kinsley in June 2007. Read the full notes

So much to learn!
Old Nature's ways
Of glee and gloom with rapt amaze
To study, probe, and paint – brown earth,
Salt sea, blue heavens, their tilth and dearth,
Birds, grasses, trees – the natural things
That throb or grope or poise on wings.

Richard Eugene Burton, Memorial Day, And Other Poems (1897), 'So Much to Learn', p. 8 Read the full notes

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

生命是一连串的自发的自然变化。逆流而动只会徒增伤悲。接受现实，万物自然循着规律发展。 Read the full notes

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

Unsourced in Musician's Little Book of Wisdom‎ (1996) by Scott E. Power, Quote 416. Read the full notes

If women need to be raped by Muslims to prove our tolerance, so be it — then thank goodness for Planned Parenthood.

circulated on Facebook 8 January 2017, debunked by Snopes 2 days later Read the full notes

The role of reason is not to make us wise but to reveal our ignorance

Commonly attributed to Hume, but without any apparent basis. Read the full notes

If I always seem ready to answer anything, to face anything, it is because before undertaking anything I have meditated for a long time, I have foreseen what could happen. It is not a genius who suddenly reveals to me what I have to say or do in a circumstance unexpected to others, it is my reflection, it is meditation.

Napolean is quoted by Hippolyte Taine in Les Origines de la France contemporaine. No letters survive with this quote. Read the full notes

Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing

Actually spoken by 1950s UCLA football coach Henry Russell "Red" Sanders. Lombardi always denied he had said this although it is close to something he did say: "Winning isn't a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing." Read the full notes

When the center does not hold, the circle falls apart.

This is a paraphrase of lines in "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats. Read the full notes

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some; it is in everyone. And, as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

These statements have been misattributed to Mandela, as being in his inaugural speech of 10 May 1994 but this is not the case. Rather, they originate with author Marianne Williamson. Read the full notes

Don't put my name on it. These are simply documents I make.

This originates with Eugène Atget, who was quoted by Ray in "Interview: Man Ray" Camera, Vol. 54, No. 2 (February 1975), p. 40 Read the full notes

Brought into right relationship with the wilderness … he would see that his appropriation of earth's resources beyond his personal needs would only bring imbalance and beget ultimate loss and poverty for all.

This statement is not by Muir, but by his biographer Linnie Marsh Wolfe, in Son of the Wilderness: The Life of John Muir (1945) page 188. Read the full notes

If the King's English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the children of Texas!

According to , a variation on this quote is reported in the New York Times on May 23, 1881, but no record of Ferguson having said this, or anything like it, could be found | This quote and variations on it are often attributed to others… Read the full notes

The writer-philosopher George Santayana is credited with the phrase: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Yet here we are, repeating that of just 52 years ago. Let us pray that come 2072, Americans then have at last heeded Santayana's warning and Dr. King’s dream is no longer words in a speech but reality being lived.

Geoff Caldwell: How long will history have to repeat before we learn?, The Joplin Globe (Jun 21, 2020) Read the full notes

Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

There's no evidence that Einstein ever said this. (Source: .) Read the full notes

We all invent ourselves as we go along, and a great man's myths about himself merely tend to stick better than most.

Attributed to "Sir Denis Brogan" in Alec Lewis (ed.) The Quotable Quotations Book (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1980), p. 243. Actually by Donal Henahan, "Joys and Sorrows", in The New York Times (12 April 1970), p. 4 Read the full notes

Put your trust in God, my boys, and keep your powder dry!

From the poem "Oliver's Advice" by William Blacker, published under the pseudonym Fitz Stewart in The Dublin University Magazine, December 1834, p. 700. This line by a different Colonel Blacker is paraphrased from an attribution to Oliver… Read the full notes

Christians should never fail to sense the operation of an angelic glory. It forever eclipses the world of demonic powers, as the sun does a candle's light.

Billy Graham, as quoted in The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Book of Revelation (2001) by Stan Campbell and James S. Bell, p. 54 Read the full notes

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.

This quote is a paraphrase of Elliot's from the original quote (below) by English nonconformist clergyman Philip Henry (1631-1696) Read the full notes

Anyone who doesn't believe in miracles isn't a realist.

David Ben-Gurion, as quoted in Israel : Years of Crisis Years of Hope (1973) by Roman Frister, p. 45 Read the full notes