Misquotes you hate

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rabidmidget

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I'm not a follower of Nietzsche's beliefs, but it still annoys me when people keep making the same misconceptions of his work, such as believing that the Ubermensch was a racial, evolutionary goal (AKA how the Nazis wrongly viewed it) instead of a non-metaphysical moral goal. Also when people say he was a Nihilist, he opposed Nihilism, he merely said that after "the death of God" (another statement that is misinterpreted), many people would succumb to Nihilism, which is where the Ubermensch comes in, as an existential goal that doesn't rely on the metaphysical t save people from Nihilism.
 

TheDist

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Mar 29, 2010
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One that drives me crazy is when religious nut jobs, usualy crationists of whatever flavor quote mine Darwin. Specificaly this "To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."

It's done so often It drives me crazy, when to quote the lines after that shows how they badly wanna misrperesent it. The rest of it goes as follows (also sorry for this being so long of a post)

"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. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated; but I may remark that, as some of the lowest organisms in which nerves cannot be detected, are capable of perceiving light, it does not seem impossible that certain sensitive elements in their sarcode should become aggregated and developed into nerves, endowed with this special sensibility"
 

klakkat

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May 24, 2008
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MisterGobbles said:
tkioz said:
It drives me to orgasm every time I hear someone spew that quote without any concept of what they are actually talking about.
I'm sorry? What about misquotes?

OT: I hate it when creationists take quotes from scientists, take them out of context, and use them to further their agenda. Also, when the media jumped on Al Gore and took the quote about him "inventing the internet", which he never actually said.
Though he did support a bill that greatly advanced the connectedness of the nation, in terms of computers, before the internet existed. So, in a way, Al Gore actually was instrumental in the creation of the internet. Yeah, that one surprised me too (though it still is true he never claimed to invent the internet, it's less ludicrous than everyone thinks).
 

klakkat

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HG131 said:
Saelune said:
Whoever said "money doesnt buy happiness" was never broke or transgendered.
Or human at all.
Money doesn't buy happiness, since happiness isn't a physical object or a service, which is all money can buy. Naturally though, many physical objects or services can produce happiness...
 

Buzz Killington_v1legacy

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Aug 8, 2009
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"Wherefore art thou, Romeo?"

That comma doesn't belong there because "wherefore" doesn't fucking mean "where". It means "why"--the line means "Why are you a Montague", basically.
 

tkioz

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May 7, 2009
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rabidmidget said:
I'm not a follower of Nietzsche's beliefs, but it still annoys me when people keep making the same misconceptions of his work, such as believing that the Ubermensch was a racial, evolutionary goal (AKA how the Nazis wrongly viewed it) instead of a non-metaphysical moral goal. Also when people say he was a Nihilist, he opposed Nihilism, he merely said that after "the death of God" (another statement that is misinterpreted), many people would succumb to Nihilism, which is where the Ubermensch comes in, as an existential goal that doesn't rely on the metaphysical t save people from Nihilism.
I hate how people don't understand him, I don't agree with much of his work, and his writing style left much to be desired (one sentence I remember went on longer then most paragraphs in a normal work); but I detest the popularist crap that people spew about him.

For one thing he wasn't an antisemite, he was in fact disgusted by antisemites, his sister (who he didn't get along with it IIRC) was an antisemite and after his death she played merry havoc with his estate and work, which is why some of his stuff can be linked to fascism and the Nazi party.

Oh and that one quote that people spew trying to be "deep" just pisses me off... "If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you."... It doesn't mean what they think it means. The full quote is "He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee.". It's a warning about obsession, not a definitive statement about life.
 

crudus

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TU4AR said:
crudus said:
"Great minds think alike"
Actually every time I hear it said it's in an endearing, lighthearted way to highlight how amusing it was that two people thought of the same thing.
My main problem with it is people try to take it the other way. People use it to assume that because they think alike they are great minds. Not so. Well, at least it is faulty logic. They don't consider they may be fools whose thoughts aren't differing.
 

Macabre9037

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Jul 2, 2009
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Kasurami said:
'Money is the root of all evil.'

No, 'Love of money is the root of all evil'. There's a surprisingly big difference.
Actually its "The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
 

Raysett

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Nov 19, 2009
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Kasurami said:
'Money is the root of all evil.'

No, 'Love of money is the root of all evil'. There's a surprisingly big difference.
Er, 'The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.' Tis ok, I only find that out yesterday. 1 Timothy 6:10.

Unless there is somewhere else it says it differently.

Edit: Never mind, got to it to late. Thanks mac
 

tkioz

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klakkat said:
HG131 said:
Saelune said:
Whoever said "money doesnt buy happiness" was never broke or transgendered.
Or human at all.
Money doesn't buy happiness, since happiness isn't a physical object or a service, which is all money can buy. Naturally though, many physical objects or services can produce happiness...
Actually money can buy happiness, I know I'm happier when I've got money in my bank account.
 

Thaluikhain

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Istvan said:
"Quantity is quality"

What Stalin actually said:
"Quantity is a quality of its own"
I thought is was "Quantity has a quality of its own", though that could just be differences in translation, it slightly changes the meaning.
 

Radoh

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Jun 10, 2010
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tkioz said:
klakkat said:
HG131 said:
Saelune said:
Whoever said "money doesnt buy happiness" was never broke or transgendered.
Or human at all.
Money doesn't buy happiness, since happiness isn't a physical object or a service, which is all money can buy. Naturally though, many physical objects or services can produce happiness...
Actually money can buy happiness, I know I'm happier when I've got money in my bank account.
That would mean that the lack of money removes happiness, thus the stuff you bought decreased your happiness because you don't have the money any more.
 

Revolutionary

Pub Club Am Broken
May 30, 2009
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It really drives me mad when anyone sings the line "I am Iron maiden" to the tune of the main "Iron Man riff", because that isn't actually in the song. That line is in the song but not in that tune (or any tune really).
 

dslatch

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Apr 15, 2009
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My area has a catholic school, wish we had a christian one because it gets so fucking irritating when a biology lesson is interrupted by someone quoting a bible, and asking how the guy with a masters in physics and is a doctor in Biology can go against the 1200 year old book of short stories.

All bible quotes just annoy me because most of them are taken out of context or twisted to make anything logical sound evil.
 

Sinketi

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Oct 29, 2008
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Rekrul said:
have your cake and eat it too, really bugs me that one!
Where's the misquote?

Unless you're referring to the common misunderstanding of it to mean "have your cake, then eat it" (which doesn't really make a point at all, save for a small one about not stealing foodstuffs) - when it clearly means being able to choose both when faced with a choice of either (literally to still possess the cake uneaten after consuming it).