DESPITE being an ardent student of literature and history, I am never able to recall quotes accurately, or even recall where the quote came from.
I know I read it once, but to pinpoint the historical figure or literary character that uttered the phrase is just beyond me.
Well, it turns out I’m not alone. In fact, most of us have been misquoting historical legends for most of our lives without even knowing it.
Although pointing out these misquotes or ‘wrongly attributed’ quotes won’t change how they are used going forwards, at least you can be that annoying person at the party pointing out everyone’s mistakes now.
Here are some of the most commonly misquoted phrases you’re likely to know:
‘Let them eat cake’ – Marie Antoinette
That poor French monarch who was so out of touch with the starving masses, she assumed they could just eat cake when they ran out of bread.
The truth is, the soon-to-be headless Marie Antoinette didn’t utter the phrase, even if she was thinking it.
The line ‘Why don’t they eat pastry?’ is the closest we’ll get to that quote, but it was actually said a century before Antoinette by another French monarch named Marie – Marie-Louise, wife of Louis XIV.
‘Well-behaved women rarely make history’ — Marilyn Monroe
So adored was the glamorous Marilyn Monroe that, in fact, many of her most famous phrases were actually altered in her favour and, in the case of this phrase, wrongly attributed altogether.
It was actually the historian, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who coined the phrase in an article she wrote for the 1976 American Quarterly, commenting on the legacy of colonial women.
‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’ – Neil Armstrong
Don’t worry, this one is almost bang on the mark, except for the grammatical error – the missing ‘a’ before ‘man’. As the world sat glued to its screens in 1969, watching in absolute awe as American astronauts bounced across the moon for the first time, Armstrong made this iconic statement.
However, sound quality not being what it is today, meant that we lost one small letter in the transmission… but it does make for a trendier catchphrase.
‘Elementary, my dear Watson’ – Sherlock Holmes
That tall, plaid-covered, magnifying glass-carrying British sleuth actually never said the phrase with which he is most associated.
Well, certainly not in the original books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
But so universally accepted is this quote that there was even a modern remake entitled ‘Elementary’. To be fair, however, there is one line that almost touches on the original: Watson exclaims, ‘Excellent’. ‘Elementary,’ said he [Sherlock].
‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’ – Albert Einstein
An historical legend? Sure. A genius? Undoubtedly. But the man behind this quote? Nope.
Despite his brilliant mind, Einstein was also an approachable individual who did coin many well known phrases.
Just not this one.
Michael Becker, the editor at the Bozeman Daily Chronicle in Montana, attributed the quote to the mystery novelist, Rita Mae Brown.
In her 1983 book, Sudden Death, the fictional character, Jane Fulton, utters the phrase for the first time.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who said it, as long as the message gets through.
And remember, as Abraham Lincoln once said: ‘Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.’
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