
That Wasn’t Mark Twain: How a Misquotation Is Born - tysone
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/26/books/famous-misquotations.html
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danso
Quote Investigator has basically trained me to reflexively assume that if a
quote is pithy and timeless, then it probably didn't originate from someone
famous.

One of my favorite quote investigations: whether Stalin said, _" A single
death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic."_

[http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-
statistic/](http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/21/death-statistic/)

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kinkrtyavimoodh
My metric is—if that quote sounds fancy or profound only because a famous name
is tagged to it, it probably did originate from that name.

Quotes that sound nice irrespective of the origina are probably apocryphal.

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brlewis
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know
for sure that just ain’t so.”

This is my favorite Mark Twain misquote because it's self-referential.

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mastazi
Some background about the mis-quote parent is talking about:
[https://newrepublic.com/minutes/126677/it-aint-dont-know-
get...](https://newrepublic.com/minutes/126677/it-aint-dont-know-gets-trouble-
must-big-short-opens-fake-mark-twain-quote)

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scandox
A previous analysis in Slate:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/05/quote_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2014/05/quote_websites_are_frequently_inaccurate_but_we_use_them_anyway.html)

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vonnik
One of the most famous fake Twain quotes is: "The coldest winter I ever spent
was a summer in San Francisco."

Or in other words: "The most famous sentence Mark Twain ever put to paper was
written by anonymous."

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TwoBit
People attribute quotes to famous people because that gives the quote more
weight.

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reillyse
Yes, and people want to be listened to and attributing what you are saying to
someone with better credentials is essentially a way of increasing the power
of what you are saying.

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praneshp
This is a great book on such quotes: [https://www.amazon.com/They-Never-Said-
Misleading-Attributio...](https://www.amazon.com/They-Never-Said-Misleading-
Attributions/dp/0195064690)

