
Lincoln Said What? Bogus Quotations Take On A New Life On Social Media - blegh
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/15/528170534/lincoln-said-what-bogus-quotations-take-on-a-new-life-on-social-media
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donarb
My favorite Lincoln quote is "Don't believe everything you read on the
internet".

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omginternets
Ha! I saw a pretty good one along the lines of:

    
    
       70% of statistics are made up on the spot.
           - Abraham Lincoln

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rypskar
Isn't it: "70% of statistics on the Internet are made up on the spot." \-
Abraham Lincoln

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omginternets
No, the internet bit is from Adolf Hitler, you Nazi.

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deepandmeaning
I've been collecting quotes for years (publishing some of them here:
[http://thinkmindful.com](http://thinkmindful.com) )

For me other peoples pithy insights bring solace, a new way of looking at
something, and a recognition that any struggles I may be going through are not
unique to me.

Does the fact that some of them are wrongly attributed bother me? Only a
little, I like to get it right. But the meaning behind the message is the main
thing.

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Bakary
The meaning can be vastly different depending on the origin of the quote,
although for general observations about life I would say you are right.

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IIAOPSW
By happenstance I just came across one that was intentionally misattributed.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" -Lee Harvey Oswald.

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toomanybeersies
I have a notebook that I write quotations, sayings, and other wise-sounding
tidbits in.

I never write who the quotes are ascribed to. I don't believe that just
because a specific person had an adage or said something means that it's
right. Unless it's on a subject that someone is an expert on, it's just a weak
appeal to authority.

For me, it's more that I already agree with what the quotes are saying, but
they're generally worded better than what I could write.

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dajohnson89
Knowing the source of a quote is valuable for all but the most trite
aphorisms​.

Take Gertrude Stein's "a rose is a rose is a rose". Sounds pretty dumb on its
own, but that was her style, and incidentally she was paraphrasing a
Shakespeare line.

Hmmm, I think I kinda proved your point.

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toomanybeersies
Obviously it doesn't apply to all quotes.

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened" is a quote I have in
my book. It's commonly attributed to Dr Seuss, but it's actually from a little
known German poem.

The actual origin of the quote isn't important. Just because it was (or wasn't
as is the case) said by Dr Seuss doesn't mean that it's any more powerful or
authoritative.

Maybe it is a "trite aphorism", but I like it anyway, so in the book it went.

As for your specific quote, I've never heard of Gertude Stein, so the name
itself has no significance to me. And to be honest, after reading the
wikipedia article on the quote, it still has no significance to me. So I'm not
going to write that quote in my book.

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Semaphor
My rule for posts that contain text as an image is that the information in
that image is almost certainly wrong.

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gravityfeed
let me Escher-ize that for you:
[https://www.genolve.com/svg/en/quotes.php?creation=2d40141d-...](https://www.genolve.com/svg/en/quotes.php?creation=2d40141d-b292-489d-afd2-c1e3e9d36519)

