Some familiar quotes…that weren’t quite said the way that everybody thinks they were said.
“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
A wise aphorism from good ol’ “Honest Abe” himself, Abraham Lincoln? It really stems from an advertisement. In 1947, Dr. Edward J. Stieglitz published a book about aging called The Second Forty Years. Print ads included that statement as the tagline.
“All that glitters is not gold.”
A proverb that means “buyer beware” or “things may not be what they seem,” it’s a misquote of a Shakespeare line. In The Merchant of Venice, the Prince of Morocco advises, “All that glisters is not gold.” Glisters is a now-obscure word that means…glitters.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
French literary icon Voltaire didn’t originate this utterance about the importance of free speech. In the early 1900s, Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote two books about Voltaire—The Life of Voltaire and The Friends of Voltaire. It’s in the latter where she originated the quote.
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?”m all?”
The Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs implores “Magic Mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all?”
“To learn who rules over you, simply find out whom you are not allowed to criticize.”
Here’s another seemingly cleverly worded bit of wit and wisdom from Voltaire, often used to garner anti-authoritarian sentiment. Its origin is dark and ugly. Kevin Strom, a Neo-Nazi writer, coined the phrase in the late 20th century, and the people he claims he was “not allowed to criticize” are the Jewish people he was convinced secretly ran the world.
“Your clothes should be tight enough to show you’re a woman but loose enough to show you’re a lady.”
Not a flirty and suggestive Marilyn Monroe quote. It was uttered by the witty, Oscar-winning costume designer (and basis for The Incredibles’ Edna Mode) Edith Head.
“Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing.”
It’s attributed to legendary football coach Vince Lombardi—some tough words to motivate his Green Bay Packers squads. Lombardi claimed to have never said it, although he was known to offer up a variant: “Winning isn’t a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing.” He was riffing on the actual quote, which originated with UCLA football coach Red Sanders.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Circus exhibitor and promoter P.T. Barnum supposedly said this, but it was actually said by rival David Hannum. Barnum had created a copy of one of Hannum’s exhibitions and successfully passed it off as the original, prompting Hannum to say what he said.
“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”
This quote appeared anonymously in the 1880s, spread, and before long was attributed to the beloved and wise Abraham Lincoln. It didn’t spontaneously appear, however. It’s based on a French aphorism that dates to the 1684 book Traité de la Vérité de la Religion Chrétienne by French writer Jacques Abbadie. The line translates to English as “One can fool some men, or fool all men in some places and times, but one cannot fool all men in all places and ages.”
“If you’re not liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”
This succinct summarization of how one’s politics change with age is offered up as an example of the great wisdom of Winston Churchill. The British prime minister got more liberal the older he got, so it wouldn’t make sense if he’d said it. He didn’t—it’s derived from a quote in an 1875 book by French writer Jules Claretie.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
A circa-World War II quote from Winston Churchill? Nope. It’s from a story in a 1943 issue of the Christian Science Sentinel by editor John Randall Dunn, who presented it as an age-old proverb. “Someone once asked a man how he was. He replied, ‘I’m going through hell!’ Said his friend: ‘Well, keep on going. That is no place to stop!’”
“Don’t fire ‘til you see the whites of their eyes!”
Right quote, but wrong war (and so the wrong guy). Many history books claim that General Andrew Jackson said this to his troops at the dawn of the Battle of New Orleans regarding British troops in the War of 1812. Who really said it: Colonel William Prescott of the Continental Army at the Battle of Bunker Bill in 1775, during the American Revolution.
“Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”
It’s one of the most famous quotes attributed to Sigmund Freud, the eminently quotable “father of psychoanalysis,” a field in which doctors find the true meaning behind their patients’ thoughts, actions, and, in the case of Freud, their dreams. But hey, this quote suggests, not everything has meaning. Freud never said it. The Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling did…kind of. In his poem “The Betrothed,” he wrote, “A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke.” (Whatever that means.)
Socialite Lady Astor and Winston Churchill ran in the same circles, but didn’t care for each other. At a fancy dinner one night, Astor told Churchill, “If I were married to you, I’d put poison in your coffee.” Churchill’s witty retort: “If I were married to you, I’d drink it.”
Such an exchange actually did take place, although it was between Lady Astor and English politician Lord Birkinhead…who was repeating a very old joke.
“The British are coming!”
If Paul Revere were supposed to secretly inform Revolutionary operatives about incoming British soldiers, why would he ride through a town shouting those exact words? He—and his freedom-fighting cohorts—would’ve been immediately arrested by crown loyalists and British army patrol officers. Revere actually shouted the coded message, “The rears are coming out.” (He also didn’t go it alone—another freedom fighter named Sybil Ludington got the word out too. Some historians say she probably informed way more people than did Revere.)
“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.”
This quip about the viral nature of misinformation has been most commonly attributed to quote machines like Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, Thomas Jefferson, and, oddly enough, Ann Landers. But it’s really a reworking of something said by 18th-century satirist and Gulliver’s Travels author Jonathan Swift: “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it.”
“Elementary, my dear Watson!”
It’s the definitive Sherlock Holmes quote and self-proclamation of genius, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fictional detective never said that in 56 short stories and four novels. In The Adventure of the Crooked Man, Holmes says, “I have the advantage of knowing your habits, my dear Watson,” and after a few lines of dialogue between himself and Watson, he interjects, “Elementary.”
“Luke, I am your father!”
Perhaps the most famous movie “spoiler” of all time, this one condensed over time from a couple lines of dialogue into a snappy catchphrase. Darth Vader from The Empire Strikes Back would never be so informal as to call someone by their first name. The scene plays out like this:
DARTH VADER: Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father.
LUKE: He told me enough. He told me you killed him.
DARTH VADER: No, I am your father!
“I can see Russia from my house.”
One of the breakout personalities of the 2008 election was Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, Alaska governor and little known outside of her state before she was thrust into the spotlight. Prone to folksy sayings, she didn’t say this one—it’s a line from a Saturday Night Live sketch in which Tina Fey parodied Palin. What Palin actually said, that Fey referenced: “In the middle of the Bering Strait are two small, sparsely populated islands: Big Diomede, which sits in Russian territory, and Little Diomede, which is part of the United States. At their closest, these two islands are a little less than two and a half miles apart, which means that, on a clear day, you can definitely see one from the other.”
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein didn’t say it. The quote dates back only to 1981 and the addiction recovery realm. In a newspaper article about Al-Anon, an organization that helps the families of alcoholics, the author mentions that one of the group’s steps is to “restore [its members] to sanity.” One woman told the reporter, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” As such organizations treasure and protect anonymity, the identity of its speaker was never divulged.
“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”
An empowering statement of active feminism, sure, but it wasn’t coined by Marilyn Monroe, or any other woman for that matter. LSD advocate and 1960s thought leader Timothy Leary said it.
“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
Sometimes attributed to Marilyn Monroe, or often left unattributed on millions of T-shirts, bumper stickers, and coffee mugs as if it were a timeless proverb, it was coined by college professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in an article in an academic journal in 1976.
“Play it again, Sam.”
Humphrey Bogart doesn’t say that line In Casablanca. Nobody does. This is the exchange:
ILSA (Ingrid Bergman): Play it once, Sam. For old times’ sake.
SAM (Dooley Wilson): I don’t know what you mean, Miss Ilsa.
ILSA: Play it, Sam. Play “As Time Goes By.”
“Just the facts, ma’am.”
It sounds like a thing that stoic, no-nonsense, by-the-book cop Joe Friday (Jack Webb) would’ve said to a witness on the classic TV show Dragnet. He did once say, “All we want are the facts, ma’am,” but “Just the facts, ma’am” comes from “St. George and the Dragonet,” a Dragnet-mocking novelty record by Stan Freberg that hit #1 in 1953.
“Beam me up, Scotty!”
This “iconic” line of Captain Kirk’s from Star Trek was never stated in this, its most quoted variant. Kirk rarely visited hostile alien planets alone, so he usually said something like “Beam us up,” while in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, he says, “Scotty, beam me up.”
“The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
It sounds like it’s a piece of ancient wisdom from a philosopher, politician, or religious figure. It originated in the 1982 movie Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Spock said it.
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Theodore Roosevelt supposedly said it, expressing his approach to diplomacy and defense. While he popularized it in the West, the actual quote involved Roosevelt quoting the source: “I have always been fond of the West African proverb, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick, you will go far.’”
“Do you feel lucky, punk?”
In the 1971 movie Dirty Harry, grizzled cop Harry Callahan (Clint Eastwood) delivers a much longer line to a criminal he’s threatening with a gun: “You’ve got ask yourself one question. Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?”
It’s often cited as proof that French ruler Marie Antoinette was so out of touch that she had no idea how or why the people of France were starving…and that the quote got out and enraged the people so much that it kicked the French Revolution into high gear. (Long story short: Marie Antoinette would soon be separated from her head.) This quote had nothing to do with any of that. In his 1767 book Confessions, French writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau spoke of a “princess” who responded to news of peasants with no food with the suggestion, “If they have no bread, let them eat cake!” He was likely referring to Maria Theresa of Spain…because in 1767 Marie Antoinette wasn’t even in power yet.