Here are three famous quotes that you have no doubt heard:
"You cannot fool all the people all the time" (Abraham Lincoln), "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" (Thomas Jefferson), and "Go West, young man" (Horace Greeley).
What do all of these quotes from celebrated people have in common? They are quotes that are almost certainly misattributed. Even though they are widely repeated again and again in speeches and books as quotations from Lincoln, Jefferson and Greeley, they are in fact fake quotes.
Abraham Lincoln was supposed to have spoken the words "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time" in a speech he made in Clinton, Illinois on September 8, 1858. However, the quote does not appear in the report of the speech given in the Bloomington Pantagraph, the local newspaper, nor does it appear in any of the collected volumes of Lincoln's speeches.
Thomas Jefferson's quote "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" is an important political maxim, but, despite appearing in many quotations books under Jefferson's name, it was never uttered by that great man. In fact, the quote comes from a speech given in 1790 by the Irish judge, John Philpot Curran, whose words were (to quote them precisely): "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt."
The American jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, put out a variation of this quote in 1852: "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."
"Go West, young man" was originally written by John Barsone Lane Soule in the Terre Haute, Indiana, Express, in 1851. Soule wrote that in an article on the growing popularity of heading to the western regions of the United States to seek fame, fortune and gold. Horace Greeley, the then editor of the New York Tribune and a candidate for the Presidency, reprinted the quote in his newspaper. Being a lot more famous than Soule, Greeley became widely seen as the author of the quote. Greeley tried to correct the record by reprinting the full article by Soule along with a clear attribution, but all in vain: most people still think of Greeley when they hear this quote.
Any misquotes and misattributions are unfortunate, as they spread error and confusion, rather than cultural literacy and understanding.
Another form of misquote is the common error of quoting selectively, which often leads to a quote meaning the exact opposite of what the original quote actually meant.
For example, lazy students and the anti-intellectual, in support of their aversion to study and learning, often quote the English poet Alexander Pope as saying "A little learning is a dangerous thing." In fact, Pope's statement from his An Essay on Criticism is here being quoted out of context. What he wrote, in full, was:
"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring."
Pope was advocating the virtues of learning -- but deep learning, not superficial learning.
Most of the misquotations discussed above may well be the inadvertent results of careless reporting and inaccurate research. They may be the result of a reporter or writer embellishing what was originally said "to make it sound more interesting."
These things are bad enough; but some misquotes are outright fabrications by religious and political propagandists trying to falsify the historical record and spread untruths, hate and distrust among the gullible.
This malicious trend in misquoting is exemplified in the regular reports of supposed deathbed recantations by famous but unconventional thinkers. The English biologist Charles Darwin has been widely reported as recanting his views on evolution at the end of his life. Shortly after Darwin's death in 1882, Lady Hope told an evangelistic meeting that she had visited Darwin in his last hours and that he had told her that he wished he "had not expressed [his] theory of evolution as [he had] done."
Despite two of Darwin's children, Henrietta and Henry, denying that their father had ever said this, with Henrietta adding that Lady Hope had not visited her father during his last illness or during any illness for that matter, the quote is repeated regularly to this day. For example, the American evangelist Jimmy Swaggart informed his congregation on October 20, 1985 that Darwin had repudiated evolution as he lay dying.
Collecting quotes and using quotes in books, articles, radio, TV, emails, or websites are normally healthy, educational activities which encourage people to study and explore the thoughts and actions of famous people from history. They are popular and fun ways to study historical events and learn about the cultural The values of our society and in other countries.
But the combination of careless reporting and mindless chatter with the media and today's powerful easy to access (books, newspapers, radio, television, Internet) means that misquotes, misleading revaluations, quotes and false urban legends, once communicated at locally through word of mouth, now often spread all over the world with an implementation rate of fire.
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