Favorite Misattributed Quotation

[Seldon2639]

What are your favorite quotations which either never happened, are taken out of context, or are reported as having been said by someone who never said them?

"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
-Voltaire.

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change."
-Charles Darwin (seriously, he never said it)

"Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."
-Winston Churchill

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin

Anyone else have misquotations which just bug them?

 

[AvsJoe]

I can't stand when someone misquotes a movie line. For instance, the line is:[HEADING=2]No, I *am* your father![/HEADING]Not "Luke, I am your father."

 

[Professor M]

I thought it was "No Luke, I *am* your father"

 

[TheNumber1Zero]

"Beam me up Scotty"

Am I doing it right?

 

[SnootyEnglishman]

"Stupid is as Stupid does"


Forrest Gump the original

 

[Hobo Joe]

I don't like the one you posted that's allegedly from Churchill but misquotations annoy me much more; such as the Star Wars one you posted or 'One small step for man.' The real quote is 'for a man.'

I also do not like when people quote things out of context - such as 'To be or not to be, that is the question.' Most people couldn't probably finish the sentence, let alone the entire line.

 

[electric_warrior]

Don't give me naval tradition, all they have is rum, sodomy and the lash (or something like that)
attributed to winston churchill, actually said by someone else, don't know who

 

[Gxas]

"Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you!"
-JFK-

I found this online and almost turned in a report on him with this quote in it. Thank god my Grandma saw it and corrected it. None of my family even realized because it's so similar to the actual quote...

 

[Futurenerd]

"Beam me up Scotty" and "Elementary my dear Watson"

 

[Burningsok]

"Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you!"
-JFK-

I found this online and almost turned in a report on him with this quote in it. Thank god my Grandma saw it and corrected it. None of my family even realized because it's so similar to the actual quote...

ya it does look similar. It's "Ask not what your country can do for you." I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to say it that way. It probably just came out wrong.

 

[anNIALLator]

"To suppose that the eye [...] could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree." It irritates me to no end when creationists parrot this quote, especially since they leave out the next part: "When it was first said that the sun stood still and the world turned round, the common sense of mankind declared the doctrine false; but the old saying of Vox populi, vox Dei, as every philosopher knows, cannot be trusted in science. Reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a simple and imperfect eye to one complex and perfect can be shown to exist, each grade being useful to its possessor, as is certainly the case; if further, the eye ever varies and the variations be inherited, as is likewise certainly the case and if such variations should be useful to any animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, should not be considered as subversive of the theory."

 

[Redingold]

Survival of the fittest.

It was Herbert Spencer who first coined it, not Darwin.

 

[Kiefer13]

W
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
-Voltaire.

Voltaire didn't say that? Who did, then? I always liked that quote.

 

[teisjm]

In the beginning god created the heaven and the earth.

Bullshit, i did! I created the light and saw that it was awesome, I put tasty steak-animals on the planet, but do i get credit, nooo, cause god looked better on print they said, who was gonna belive that some random forum-tard did all that they said...

 

[Nebr66]

"Do ya feel lucky punk?" is my favorite, Dirty Harry pwns.

I would give the real quote, but it's more of a conversation.

 

[Lullabye]

"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
-Voltaire.

Either my education system is just terrible, or you need to start sourcing your arguments.
You're right [http://www.voltaire.ox.ac.uk/www_vf/about_voltaire/didnt_say.pdf]

 

[Seldon2639]

"Show me a young Conservative and I'll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I'll show you someone with no brains."
-Winston Churchill

Churchill did actually say that.

But then again he was batshit insane.

Not as far as I know. Wikiquotes says its misattributed, but their source is a bad one, so...

W
"I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
-Voltaire.

Voltaire didn't say that? Who did, then? I always liked that quote.

It comes from the book The Friends of Voltaire (1907) by Evelyn Beatrice Hall.

 

[TheRocketeer]

ya it does look similar. It's "Ask not what your country can do for you." I'm pretty sure he didn't mean to say it that way. It probably just came out wrong.

How is this wrong?

Kennedy had impeccable grammar; it was one of his better qualities.

Now, he did have a thick accent, and he tended to say 'firstly,' secondly,' etc. (which is improper), but other than that his excellent diction was mainly why he's remembered as an intellectual.

 

[TheSentinel]

"Go Fuck Yourself"

-Oscar Wilde