Notes to Familiar Misquotations
Introduction: The Familiar Misquotations page has grown rather long and so have the notes to it, so to conserve space I've moved the notes to this separate page.
John Adams
- Adams' boyhood parish priest and Latin school master.
- John Adams, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 4/19/1817, p. 2. This is an image of a page from the handwritten manuscript. For a transcription, see: Lester J. Cappon, editor, The Adams-Jefferson Letters, Volume 2 (University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 509. Thanks to José Gabriel Pedroso Rosa for pointing out a mistake in the Context.
- See, also: Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989).
Ben Bradlee
- Dixy Lee Ray & Lou Guzzo, Trashing the Planet: How Science Can Help Us Deal with Acid Rain, Depletion of the Ozone, and Nuclear Waste (Among Other Things), (1990), p. 76.
- Reed Irvine, "AIM Report Notes from the Editor's Cuff", AIM Report, 5/2000, B.
- P. 184.
- David Brooks, "Journalists and Others for Saving the Planet", The Wall Street Journal, 10/5/1989.
Richard Cheney
- "Transcript for March 16", NBC News' Meet the Press, 3/16/2003.
- Dana Milbank, "Verbatim", The Washington Post, 5/20/2003.
Bill Gates
- Bill Gates, "Bill Gates: Innovating to zero!", TED, 2/2010.
- Bill Gates, "Annual Letter 2009", Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 1/2009.
Al Gore
- Debra J. Saunders, "Faux Candor", The Weekly Standard, 5/29/2000.
- Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, 2nd edition (1992), p. 119.
- Mark O'Connell, "'Hang in There!'―Arthur Schopenhauer: Quotation websites and the outsourcing of erudition", Slate, 5/19/2014.
Ben Hecht
- Ben Hecht, A Jew in Love (1931), pp. 120-121.
- Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), pp. 44-45.
Adolf Hitler
- Jerome Beatty, Jr., "Trade Winds", Saturday Review, 5/17/1969, p. 10.
- John D. Lofton, Jr., "About That Hitler Quote", National Review, 4/21/1970, reprinted in Congressional Record, 5/7/1970, p. 14757.
- Ralph Keyes, "Nice Guys Finish Seventh": False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations (1992), pp. 190-191.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Natural Law", The Harvard Law Review (1918).
Maurice Jarre
- Shawn Pogatchnik, "Student hoaxes world's media on Wikipedia", The Associated Press, 5/12/2009.
- Patrick O'Connor, "Maurice Jarre", The Guardian, 3/31/2009. See the correction of 4/3/2009 appended to the obituary.
Thomas Jefferson
- Thomas Jefferson, From Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 21 March 1801, National Archives, accessed: 7/28/2023.
- For Jefferson's religion, see: St. Elmo Nauman, Jr. Dictionary of American Philosophy (1973), under "Jefferson".
- For Priestley, see: Nauman, op. cit.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, Letters, 4/21/1803.
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, Letters, 4/11/1823.
- For example, see: "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson―Truth! & Unproven!", Truth or Fiction, 3/17/2015.
- "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms (Spurious Quotation)", Monticello, Accessed: 7/28/2023.
- Anna Berkes, "Strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms (Spurious Quotation)", Monticello, 1/9/2012.
- Walter Williams, "To Keep And Bear Arms", 3/29/2000. To his credit, Williams included the correct version of the first sentence without the bogus second sentence on a page of his website: "Right to Keep and Bear Arms", accessed: 7/28/2023.
George Kennan
- George Kennan, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948 (1976), Volume 1, Part 2, pp. 523-525.
John F. Kennedy
- Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Director's Cut (1991). The contextomy occurs during the title sequence.
- John F. Kennedy, "Transcript of Broadcast With Walter Cronkite Inaugurating a CBS Television News Program", The American Presidency Project, 9/2/1963.
Robert E. Lee
- Robert E. Lee, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (1886), pp. 83-84.
James Madison
- Brooke Allen, "Our Godless Constitution", The Nation, 2/3/2005.
- James Madison, "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments", 6/20/1785.
- The words in brackets are sometimes left out. Sometimes ellipses are inserted between "religion" and the rest of the quote to indicate that something has been omitted; also, sometimes the word "is" is in brackets, indicating that it has been editorially inserted, though the word occurs more than once in the source of the quote―see the Context.
- George Mason, et al., "The Virginia Declaration of Rights", 5/15/1776. See, also: Elizabeth Knowles, editor, What They Didn't Say: A Book of Misquotations (2006), pp. 94-95.
Jamie McIntyre
- "America Under Attack: Bush Holds Press Briefing", CNN, 9/11/2001.
- S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies (Sixth Edition, 2000), pp. 114-118.
- "Quick Guide & Transcript: New Pentagon 9/11 video released, BBC interviews wrong 'Guy'", CNN, 5/16/2006.
Danielle O'Brien
- "Air Traffic Controllers Recall 9/11", ABC News, 10/24/2001.
- Danielle (O'Brien) Howell, "Response to 9/11, the Big Lie", 911 Myths, accessed: 7/28/2023.
Condoleezza Rice
- This and subsequent quotes from the movie were verified in: Michael Moore, The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader (2004), pp. 129-130.
- Dave Kopel, "Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11", 2004.
Margaret Sanger
- Margaret Sanger, "Letter from Margaret Sanger to Dr. C.J. Gamble, December 10, 1939", Smith College Libraries.
- "Guest: Margaret Sanger", The Mike Wallace Interview, 9/21/1957.
Donald Trump
- Sam Levine, "Trump Called White Supremacists 'Very Fine People' But An Athlete Who Protests Is A 'Son Of A Bitch'", HuffPost, 9/25/2017.
- "Full Transcript and Video: Trump's News Conference in New York", The New York Times, 8/15/2017. I have edited this excerpt down as much as possible without losing any important context. Most of what I removed is either repetition or irrelevant to the issue of whom Trump called "very fine people". I couldn't get the embedded video to work, but you can see the relevant part of the press conference here: "Trump's Full, Heated Press Conference on Race and Violence in Charlottesville (Full)", NBC News, 8/15/2017.
- Rosie Gray, "Trump Defends White-Nationalist Protesters: 'Some Very Fine People on Both Sides'", The Atlantic, 8/15/2017.
- Denis Slattery & Christopher Brennan, "President Trump calls white supremacists ‘very fine people,’ blames Charlottesville on ‘both sides’ in bizarre Trump Tower tirade", New York Daily News, 8/16/2017. Again, this is not the fault of the editor who wrote this headline as the entire article misrepresents what Trump said.
- Matt Arco, "Murphy unleashes on Trump, says his policies ‘screw’ New Jersey", NJ, 4/17/2019.
- The following article tipped me off to this contextomy: Steve Cortes, "Trump Didn't Call Neo-Nazis 'Fine People.' Here's Proof.", Real Clear Politics, 3/21/2019. I wouldn't call this contextomy a "hoax", as Cortes does, since that suggests that someone is intentionally committing it.
- Alexander Burns, "Joe Biden's Campaign Announcement Video, Annotated", The New York Times, 4/25/2019. Burns' annotations fail to point out the contextomy, which is another sign that it's "too good to check".
- See, for instance: Farah Stockman, "Who Were the Counterprotesters in Charlottesville?", The New York Times, 8/14/2017.
- Rachel Stoltzfoos, "FBI Investigating Antifa For Plotting To Buy Guns From Cartel For 'Armed Rebellion'", The Daily Caller, 4/29/2019.
Mike Walter
- Porter Anderson, "Witnesses to the Moment: Workers' Voices", CNN, 9/11/2001.
- Patrick Smith, "Ask the Pilot", Salon, 5/19/2006.
Charles Wilson
- Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, p. 131.
Revised: 7/29/2023