Friday, July 18, 2014

An aversion to attributing a quote to the wrong person.

There are a lot of famous quotes that have been made by now historically famous people. However some of these historic figures never said some of the quotes they are thought to have said.

As mentioned in the previous article there is no reason this should be happening in the 21st Century with the correct information literally at our fingertips.

Attributing certain quotes to historic figures really needs to stop, and the history books need to be rewritten with the correct information.

Here are some classic examples:

People think Voltaire said: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." He never made this statement. The quote was made by Evelyn Beatrice Hall a century later.

Another misquoted person is Mark Twain. He is thought to have said "The only two certainties in life are death and taxes." When in fact he never made this statement. Different versions of the quote were written both by Christopher Bullock and Edward Ward.

Another is this quote: "There’s a sucker born every minute" thought to have been made by PT Barnum. The quote was made by one of his competitors.

When people attribute quotes to historic figures they need to get their facts straight and make the person actually made the statement.


Previous articles in the series:
An aversion to using historic quotes for financial gain.
An aversion to incorrectly stating historically famous quotes.

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