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Misquotations

 
 
skolld
15:26 / 13.07.05
I was researching the quote by Edmond Burke " The only thing necassary of for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing",
This is a very popular quote among right wing and zealous patriotic groups in the U.S. right now, so i did some digging, and as it turns out, he never said it.
A good site here on how it came to be

I was wondering what other quotes are out there that aren't really what they seem.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
16:29 / 13.07.05
Let them eat cake.
 
 
Jack Denfeld
16:34 / 13.07.05
the quotation was first written by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Confessions. Actually, Rousseau wrote "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche," which essentially means "let them eat a type of egg-based bread" (not quite cake, but still a bit extravagant). Rousseau claimed that "a great princess" told the peasants to eat cake/brioche when she heard they had no bread.

But Rousseau wrote this in early 1766, when Marie Antoinette was only 10 years old, still living in her native Austria and not yet married to King Louis XVI. So it's highly unlikely that Marie uttered the pompous phrase. Perhaps Rousseau invented them to illustrate the divide between royalty and the poor -- which is certainly how the phrase has been used ever since.


http://ask.yahoo.com/ask/20021122.html
more here
 
 
Ganesh
16:41 / 13.07.05
"Just give us yer fockin' money"

Geldof never said it, apparently.
 
 
alas
18:28 / 13.07.05
Many people very much want Nelson Mandela to have said "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?..."

It was, however, just a new-agey white woman named Marianne Williamson....
http://www.geocities.com/fascin8or/mandela.htm
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
19:52 / 13.07.05
This one was never even supposed to be convincing, but I still like the idea of Lenin saying:

I was born under a squandering Tsar.
 
 
Essential Dazzler
20:51 / 13.07.05
You dirty rat.
 
 
Haus Of Pain
22:56 / 13.07.05
"We all play naked in Neverland"
 
 
skolld
12:46 / 14.07.05
"Play it again Sam"

The actual quote "If she can stand it, I can play it."

I never understood how this one got that way.
 
 
_Boboss
14:46 / 14.07.05
rimbaud is reputed to have said:

'Don't push me'

when in fact everyone's favourite nam-vet ex-poet slavetrader (or was that verlaine?) really said

'Don't push it.'

See? 'It', not 'me'.

ah, les francaises
 
 
Tezcatlipoca
16:23 / 14.07.05
"Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well."

"Money is the root of all evil."

and, less timeless, but nonetheless an inaccurate quote:

"Beam me up, Scotty."
 
 
Jack Denfeld
16:24 / 14.07.05
Tez, can you explain all three of those?
 
 
Jack Fear
18:05 / 14.07.05
The passage from Hamlet starts, "Alas! Poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest..." Not a "well" in sight.

The actual quotation from St. Paul is "The love of money is the root of all evil."

And while Kirk did indeed ask Scotty to beam him up many times in the course of 78 episodes, he never actually said, "Beam me up, Scotty." Funny, but true.
 
 
astrojax69
18:43 / 15.07.05
"Money is the root of all evil."

well, technically, not misquoted, just incompletely quoted...
 
 
DaveBCooper
13:13 / 18.07.05
…In, I guess, the same way that people who quote the ‘eye for an eye’ bit tend not to go on to JC’s further cheek-based comments.
 
  
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