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.

Index
Adams, John Bradlee, Ben Cheney, Richard Gates, Bill
Gore, Al Hecht, Ben Hitler, Adolf Holmes, Oliver Wendell
Jarre, Maurice Jefferson, Thomas Kennan, George Kennedy, John F.
Lee, Robert E. Madison, James McIntyre, Jamie O'Brien, Danielle
Orwell, George Rice, Condoleezza Sanger, Margaret Trump, Donald
Walter, Mike Wilson, Charles

John Adams

  1. Adams' boyhood parish priest and Latin school master.
  2. 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.
  3. See, also: Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989).

Ben Bradlee

  1. 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.
  2. Reed Irvine, "AIM Report Notes from the Editor's Cuff", AIM Report, 5/2000, B.
  3. P. 184.
  4. David Brooks, "Journalists and Others for Saving the Planet", The Wall Street Journal, 10/5/1989.

Richard Cheney

  1. "Transcript for March 16", NBC News' Meet the Press, 3/16/2003.
  2. Dana Milbank, "Verbatim", The Washington Post, 5/20/2003.

Bill Gates

  1. Bill Gates, "Bill Gates: Innovating to zero!", TED, 2/2010.
  2. Bill Gates, "Annual Letter 2009", Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 1/2009.

Al Gore

  1. Debra J. Saunders, "Faux Candor", The Weekly Standard, 5/29/2000.
  2. Al Gore, Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit, 2nd edition (1992), p. 119.
  3. Mark O'Connell, "'Hang in There!'―Arthur Schopenhauer: Quotation websites and the outsourcing of erudition", Slate, 5/19/2014.

Ben Hecht

  1. Ben Hecht, A Jew in Love (1931), pp. 120-121.
  2. Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), pp. 44-45.

Adolf Hitler

  1. Jerome Beatty, Jr., "Trade Winds", Saturday Review, 5/17/1969, p. 10.
  2. John D. Lofton, Jr., "About That Hitler Quote", National Review, 4/21/1970, reprinted in Congressional Record, 5/7/1970, p. 14757.
  3. Ralph Keyes, "Nice Guys Finish Seventh": False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations (1992), pp. 190-191.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

  1. Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Natural Law", The Harvard Law Review (1918).

Maurice Jarre

  1. Shawn Pogatchnik, "Student hoaxes world's media on Wikipedia", The Associated Press, 5/12/2009.
  2. Patrick O'Connor, "Maurice Jarre", The Guardian, 3/31/2009. See the correction of 4/3/2009 appended to the obituary.

Thomas Jefferson

  1. Thomas Jefferson, From Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestley, 21 March 1801, National Archives, accessed: 7/28/2023.
  2. For Jefferson's religion, see: St. Elmo Nauman, Jr. Dictionary of American Philosophy (1973), under "Jefferson".
  3. For Priestley, see: Nauman, op. cit.
  4. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Benjamin Rush, Letters, 4/21/1803.
  5. Thomas Jefferson, Letter to John Adams, Letters, 4/11/1823.
  6. For example, see: "The Writings of Thomas Jefferson―Truth! & Unproven!", Truth or Fiction, 3/17/2015.
  7. "No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms (Spurious Quotation)", Monticello, Accessed: 7/28/2023.
  8. Anna Berkes, "Strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms (Spurious Quotation)", Monticello, 1/9/2012.
  9. 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

  1. George Kennan, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948 (1976), Volume 1, Part 2, pp. 523-525.

John F. Kennedy

  1. Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Director's Cut (1991). The contextomy occurs during the title sequence.
  2. 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

  1. Robert E. Lee, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (1886), pp. 83-84.

James Madison

  1. Brooke Allen, "Our Godless Constitution", The Nation, 2/3/2005.
  2. James Madison, "Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments", 6/20/1785.
  3. 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.
  4. 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

  1. "America Under Attack: Bush Holds Press Briefing", CNN, 9/11/2001.
  2. S. Morris Engel, With Good Reason: An Introduction to Informal Fallacies (Sixth Edition, 2000), pp. 114-118.
  3. "Quick Guide & Transcript: New Pentagon 9/11 video released, BBC interviews wrong 'Guy'", CNN, 5/16/2006.

Danielle O'Brien

  1. "Air Traffic Controllers Recall 9/11", ABC News, 10/24/2001.
  2. Danielle (O'Brien) Howell, "Response to 9/11, the Big Lie", 911 Myths, accessed: 7/28/2023.

Condoleezza Rice

  1. This and subsequent quotes from the movie were verified in: Michael Moore, The Official Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader (2004), pp. 129-130.
  2. Dave Kopel, "Fifty-nine Deceits in Fahrenheit 9/11", 2004.

Margaret Sanger

  1. Margaret Sanger, "Letter from Margaret Sanger to Dr. C.J. Gamble, December 10, 1939", Smith College Libraries.
  2. "Guest: Margaret Sanger", The Mike Wallace Interview, 9/21/1957.

Donald Trump

  1. Sam Levine, "Trump Called White Supremacists 'Very Fine People' But An Athlete Who Protests Is A 'Son Of A Bitch'", HuffPost, 9/25/2017.
  2. "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.
  3. Rosie Gray, "Trump Defends White-Nationalist Protesters: 'Some Very Fine People on Both Sides'", The Atlantic, 8/15/2017.
  4. 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.
  5. Matt Arco, "Murphy unleashes on Trump, says his policies ‘screw’ New Jersey", NJ, 4/17/2019.
  6. 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.
  7. 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".
  8. See, for instance: Farah Stockman, "Who Were the Counterprotesters in Charlottesville?", The New York Times, 8/14/2017.
  9. Rachel Stoltzfoos, "FBI Investigating Antifa For Plotting To Buy Guns From Cartel For 'Armed Rebellion'", The Daily Caller, 4/29/2019.

Mike Walter

  1. Porter Anderson, "Witnesses to the Moment: Workers' Voices", CNN, 9/11/2001.
  2. Patrick Smith, "Ask the Pilot", Salon, 5/19/2006.

Charles Wilson

  1. Paul F. Boller, Jr. & John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions, p. 131.

Revised: 7/29/2023