Word Salad – May 2024

Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due

Each of us from time to time hears a phrase that has stood the test of time and mentally we connect the famous phrase to a specific person. However, many times we are misguided in that attribution. Following are several well-known sayings attributed to the wrong person. Odds are you’ll know who is usually credited with the saying, but do you know who should receive the credit—or blame?

1. “Standing on the shoulders of giants.” We can say with confidence that this is one of the most well-known quotations by Sir Isaac Newton. And while he did write those exact words in a letter to Robert Hooke, an English mathematician and philosopher, he didn’t author the phrase. Rather, he was referring to a quotation by a 12th century philosopher named Bernard of Chartres. Bernard wrote the following: “We are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants, and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter.” Thus, the famous quote didn’t belong to Newton, but it is still a very clever idea, so much so, that even the father of physics himself could appreciate it.

2. “Let them eat cake.” We all believe Marie Antoinette famously uttered this phrase when the starving French peasants begged for bread. The phrase was immortalized in the book Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but the author referred to the monarch as “great princess” instead of calling her by name. Eventually, the phrase was wrongly attributed to Marie Antoinette, despite the fact that she was only 12 years old when Rousseau wrote the book and wasn’t part of the French royal court until she married King Louis XVI in 1770.

3. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This quotation is much closer to the truth than the previous one because at least it reflects Voltaire’s revolutionary political views. The truth is, however, that Voltaire was not the author of these words. It was Evelyn Beatrice Hall, an author commissioned to write the biography of the famous French philosopher, who wrote the now-famous phrase about Voltaire. She was simply imagining how Voltaire felt about a specific topic. Apparently, her intuition described the French philosopher’s views so well that all the readers simply assumed it was a real quote.

4. “If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.” Winston Churchill never said these words. In fact, the Churchill Centre and Museum in London confirm the misattribution and add that the great British prime minister would have never said such a disrespectful thing in public, especially since his dear wife Clementine was a lifelong liberal herself. The true originator of the phrase was Francois Guizot, a French historian and politician, who coined the phrase in the early 19th century.

5. “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.” The positive message in these words may be meaningful and inspiring, but it wasn’t part of Nelson Mandela’s 1994 inaugural address like the Internet may lead you to believe. These words actually belong to self-help guru Marianne Williamson who wrote them in a 1989 book A Return To Love, a spiritual guide. The quote goes on, “It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” Nicely put, not-Nelson.

6. “Well-behaved women rarely make history.” Several people assumed that this quote belonged to Marilyn Monroe, but in reality there is no indication to believe so. The real author of the saying is also a very clever woman, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. She is a celebrated historian, who actually called her 2007 book about colonial woman history Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History.

7. “If you have to ask how much they are, you can’t afford one.” We can easily imagine the famous banker J. P. Morgan saying these words. In fact, this is the only quote that is kind of right, but not really. The famous banker’s biographer, Jean Strouse, found a recording of Morgan’s answer to Henry Clay Pierce’s question about the price of Morgan’s yacht. It goes as follows, “You have no right to own a yacht if you ask that question.”

8. “The ends justify the means.” These words are attributed to Niccoló Machiavelli and misdated by about 14 centuries. Instead, the quote comes from the times of antiquity. In the classic poem “Heroides II” by Roman poet Ovid, one can easily find these words: “Exitus acta probat,” which translates to “the outcome justifies the means.” One can hardly blame the public for misattributing this quote to the Italian political philosopher, as his principal work, The Prince, made the word Machiavellian a byword for deceit, despotism, and political manipulation.

9. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” You can find different versions of these words, but we owe none of these versions to the famous physicist Albert Einstein. American journalist Michael Becker traced the origins of this quote back to a mystery novelist named Rita Mae Brown. In her novel Sudden Death, she mentions that the quote belonged to Jane Fulton, a character she herself made up. In the novel she wrote, “Unfortunately, Susan didn’t remember what Jane Fulton once said. ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.’”

10. “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Mark Twain, Jack Benny, and even Muhammad Ali have all been credited with this quote. However, to this day the truth is that no one knows who first uttered it, so it gets attributed to a new person every time. In 1970, a South Carolina newspaper stated that Twain was the author, but they made it up. And though Jack Benny and Muhammad Ali both said these words much later, the earliest mention in history belongs to an anonymous governmental researcher. The unknown person wrote in 1968, “Aging is a matter of mind. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” With time and after being repeated over and over, the “mind over matter” part got added to the quote, so one can even say that the wise words were a communal effort. In the end, does it really matter who said it? It’s still a very clever saying that everyone should know.