They didn’t say that: some of history’s most famous misquotes

Everyone loves a good quote. They can be used to demonstrate our wit or knowledge, serve as a devastating one-line putdown to decisively end an argument, and – perhaps everyone’s favourite – make appeals to authority. After all, if a historical figure said it, then it must be true.

The epistemology of misquotes is interesting. We have an innate desire to show off our knowledge. We’re also eager to seek out things which reinforce our view of the world. That often makes us more credible and less rigorous than we should be when it comes to verifying quotes (because we’re so excited about landing that killer argument-stopper). The light speed travel of information (and misinformation) on the internet further complicates things. It can be difficult to deduce or verify the true origins of a quote when the false version is repeated enough times, especially if it’s just a little bit snappier than the real thing. Plus, many of the most famous misquotes seem to perfectly capture the essence of a person’s wit or personality. Thus, they take on the quality of truthiness so memorably defined by Stephen Colbert – something that is not true, but sounds true.

Here, then, is a proudly non-exhaustive list of some of history’s most enduring misquotes. The list is in three categories: “it wasn’t said by them” (quotes of false provenance), “they didn’t say that” (quotes where the better-remembered version isn’t what was actually said) and “no one said it” (apocryphal quotes).

One could write entire books about the misquotes attributed to William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Marilyn Monroe and Winston Churchill. Call it the penance to pay for world-historical wit. Although all feature on this list, I’ve limited them to one each.

Read all the way to the end for a fun bonus misquote which serves as a brilliant and bizarre illustration of the ability of the internet in general, and social media in particular, to twist quotes into a shape virtually unrecognisable from their original form.

PS – a shout-out to the person who runs the excellent Quote Investigator website for dedicating their time to hacking away at the weeds of misinformation and tracing the actual origins of quotations. He is interviewed about his work and motivations in this piece by VICE.

It wasn’t said by them

“I used to think I was the strangest person in the world, but then I thought, there are so many people in the world, there must be someone just like me who feels bizarre and flawed in the same ways I do.” – Frida Kahlo
A very strong misquote to start us off, and actually one of the main inspirations for this piece. A week ago, the Museum of Modern Art tweeted a quote, purportedly from the famous Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, which seemed to perfectly encapsulate the anxiety which all people encounter when confronting their own difference. It’s a powerful quote to soothe the worries so many of us feel, especially coming from such an iconoclastic artist. 

But I bet you know where you this is going. Quote Investigator, tasked with exploring the mysterious origins of this quote, determined that there was no evidence in either English or Spanish that Kahlo ever said this. The truth is better – and far stranger – than the lie. 

Apparently the first known use of this quote is from Web 2.0 favourite PostSecret, all the way back in March 2008. This quote was written on a postcard which had been mailed to a post-office box maintained by Frank Warren, the founder of PostSecret. Warren would encourage “individuals to write personal secrets on homemade postcards and anonymously mail them to him.” The postcard is below:

After rummaging around, Quote Investigator concludes that the most likely originator was a Rebecca Katherine Martin – Becky to her friends. I recommend reading the whole article. It doubles as a great reflection on the nature of ownership and attribution in the Age of Online.

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they attack you. Then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
Most often attributed to the famous Indian peace activist, the quote actually bears a striking resemblance to a passage from a speech given by union activist Nicholas Klein in 1918: "First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you. And that is what is going to happen to the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America."

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” – Voltaire
This justly famous line in defence of the freedom of speech, regardless of its contents, was supposedly written or said by the famous French philosophe Voltaire. It actually appeared in an article about him, written by the author S.G. Tallentyre in 1907.

“The only two certainties in life are death and taxes.” – Mark Twain
Ah, Mark Twain. It seems that his after-life penance for whatever sins he committed during his life is to reappear as the originator of hundreds of quotes of dubious origin.

This quote, which belongs to the category of “definitely untrue but it sounds good”, was probably never said by Twain. Instead, two less famous writers, working in the 18th century, Christopher Bullock and Edward Ward, are most likely responsible. Bullock, in 1716, wrote that “tis impossible to be sure of anything but death and taxes,” while in 1724 Ward wrote “death and taxes, they are certain.”

“Let them eat cake!” – Marie Antoinette
This has a decent case for being history’s most famous misquote. It’s pithy, memorable and deliciously illustrative of the contempt in which the European aristocracy held the common folk. The only problem is that Marie Antoinette never said or wrote this. The Geneva-born writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau did. And he didn’t mention cake. A truer translation of his line is “let them eat brioche!”. Still delicious, but not the same thing.

“Et tu, Brute?” – Julius Caesar
Supposedly uttered by Caesar upon recognising that one of his assassins was his friend Marcus Junius Brutus, this line of course actually appears in Act 3 of Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar. The Roman historian Suetonius writes that Caesar said nothing, which makes sense given that it’s a lot to expect someone being murdered to come out with a pearler of a line. Others claim he spat out the Greek phrase kai su, teknon which means roughly, “you too, young man.”

“A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” – Maya Angelou
This misquote is so pervasive (or perhaps it’s the opposite!) it was used by Barack Obama in a speech presenting the 2013 National Medals of the Arts and Humanities presentation and by the United States Postal Service in a postage stamp they issued to honour Maya Angelou. Oops!

It turns out that this phrase, most likely attributed to Angelou because of her authorship of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was written by children’s book author Joan Walsh Anglund in a 1967 collection of poetry titled A Cup of Sun. The USPS decided to release the stamp anyway. Funnily enough, Maya Angelou never claimed the line was hers! She would know.

"The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." – Albert Einstein
This one is a classic. Being on the internet in the 21st century gives one a very mistaken sense of Albert Einstein who, while in truth not taciturn, was certainly not as prone to making memorable quips as the likes of Brainyquote would have us believe.

There’s apparently no real consensus on who actually coined the phrase, although one theory holds it first appeared in the 1981 book Narcotics Anonymous, which includes the line “insanity is repeating the same mistakes and expecting different results.” Close enough!

“May the force be with you.” – Obi Wan Kenobi
Han Solo says it! Not Obi Wan. Go back and check. Also, Han shot first.

They didn’t say that

“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” – Neil Armstrong
Neil isn’t to blame for this one. He was hundreds of thousands of kilometres away at the time and late 1960s radio technology was not what it is now. He actually said, “one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”, but the signal very briefly cut out midway through his famous utterance.

When you think about it, the better-known version doesn’t make sense because, in that version, man and mankind are synonyms, which would render the quote redundant.

“Blood, sweat and tears” – Winston Churchill
Call this one a technicality. Did Churchill say this? He didn’t. He did, however, say “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat," which is less catchy but very similar to the version so beloved by sports commentators today.

“The ends justify the means.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
This has, of course, been said countless times by teenage utilitarians and comic book supervillains. But Machiavelli, the famous Renaissance schemer, is one of the few who never did. He did express a somewhat similar although much more nuanced sentiment in his work The Prince. Chapter 18 includes the following:

“Men judge generally more by the eye than by the hand, because it belongs to everybody to see you, to few to come in touch with you. Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of all men, and especially of princes, which it is not prudent to challenge, one judges by the result.

For that reason, let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.”

It’s not as catchy, granted.

Furthermore, there is reasonably strong evidence that Macchiavelli, whose consequentialist “do what it takes” attitude is so widely known that today there is an adjective which bears his name, was actually joking when he wrote The Prince. He was actually arrested and tortured by agents of the Medici family, to whom he dedicated that work. And in his later years he wrote several popular political satires for the stage.

“Do you feel lucky, punk?” – Dirty Harry
Mr. Harry actually says, “you've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do you, punk?" Check it out for yourself (skip to the 2-minute mark for the line).

“A rose by any other name smells just as sweet.”– William Shakespeare
Most people can probably correctly identify this quote as being from Romeo and Juliet, perhaps Shakespeare’s best-known play. The actual passage from the 1599 printing (I did not know until researching this blog post that there was a 1597 printing, widely believed to be an unauthorised or faulty version) proceeds as follows:

’Tis but thy name that is my enemy:
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague,
What's Montague? It is not hand nor foot,
Nor arm nor face. O be some other name,
belonging to a man!

What's in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other word would smell as sweet.

The misquote retains the spirit and meaning of the original – that true value is determined by substance, not labels.

“Play it again, Sam.” – Ingrid Bergman
She actually says, “Play it Sam.” If you’ve not seen Casablanca, read the rest of this post and then immediately watch it. It fully deserves its classic status.

No one said it

“If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.” – Marilyn Monroe
I understand why people want to believe this is a Marilyn Monroe quote. It’s bold, strident and unashamed. That’s probably why it adorns countless Facebook and Pinterest profiles. Just one problem – there’s no proof she said it, or indeed that it had much of a life before Facebook sent everyone scrambling for the quote which perfectly summed them up sometime in the late 2000s.

“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” – Sigmund Freud
It’s fun to imagine Freud saying this. It feels like a subtle breaking of the fourth wall, an acknowledgement of self-awareness by this serious and imposing figure. But it seems to be apocryphal.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – Edmund Burke
This quote, which I am certain is favoured by people with a predisposition for military intervention in developing countries (note: this is a joke, not a serious assertion), was not said by Edmund Burke, the famous Irish statesman and conservative philosopher. 

In fact, no one really knows who said it. But it’s a very famous misattribution. No less a figure than John F. Kennedy attributed the quote to Burke in a speech in May, 1961, which illustrates that not even the best of us are immune to employing memorable quotes in the service of our desires. (Come to think of it, lots of American Presidents are being misled by their speechwriters. If any presidents are reading this, please hire me.)

“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” – Margaret Mead
I’ll let the Quote Investigator handle this one. In short, this corker of a line was credited to Mead four years after her death in a 1982 book written by Donald Keys. Committed truth-seekers (presumably including the Quote Investigator himself) have searched high and low and have found no incontrovertible evidence of Mead saying or writing it.

Bonus content

I made a promise and I’m a guy who keeps his promises. This is a beauty.

On October 12th 1984, the provisional Irish Republican Army attempted to assassinate UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet when they were staying at the Grand Brighton Hotel for the Conservative Party’s conference.

Thatcher narrowly avoided the attack, which nevertheless killed five people. The IRA claimed responsibility and issued a warning the next day, which read:

“Mrs. Thatcher will now realise that Britain cannot occupy our country and torture our prisoners and shoot our people in their own streets and get away with it. Today we were unlucky, but remember we only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always. Give Ireland peace and there will be no more war.”

Somehow, part of this chilling statement ended up as an inspirational quote on American Facebook a few years ago:

Here’s a viral tweet laughing about it. The history of how this happened is baffling. Thatcher didn’t say it, she was its target! What about this quote is inspiring and not terrifying? A question without an answer.