Heck Of A Guy

Quasi-Quotations Quarantined

I improve on misquotation.
- Cary Grant

Mr. Grant’s gracious declaration notwithstanding, most misquotations do not improve on the original. And, certain quotations are more often misstated – in a manner that subverts their original intent – than expressed correctly.

I raise three objections to this practice:

1. It’s just wrong. Most quotations significant enough to serve as insightful or inspirational aphorisms, pithy observations, or authoritative evidence are, at best, less effective and eloquent in their deformed versions and, not uncommonly, lose or even reverse their meanings completely.
2. Since many creators of quotations are dead and those still living can’t police the planet to protect their words, it seems, well, rude and disrespectful to misquote them.
3. It annoys me to the point that, despite my efforts to emulate Cary Grant’s civility, I sometimes correct such mistakes, which, of course, only wastes my time and annoys the errant quoters. This post is a desperate attempt to forestall my invocation of contextual counterterrorism.

Misquotation Criteria

Misquotations, for the purposes of this post, are unintentionally erroneous recitations of lines that are, for whatever reason, well known.

This excludes several categories:

• Misunderstood song lyrics have their own dedicated web sites and require no further attention from me.¹
• Intentional misquotations, as long as they are presented as such, do not fall into the category under discussion. I, for example, believe the original saying, “Hurt me once, shame on you; hurt me twice, shame on me” is significantly inferior to my version, “Hurt me once, shame on you; hurt me twice, break your face” and don’t mind saying so.²
• And “misquotation” is too often used to mean “inaccurate statement.” The example that comes to mind is the prediction by IBM founder Thomas J. Watson in 1943, “I think there is a world market for about five computers.” This would, admittedly, be a better example were there any evidence Watson actually said this. But even if he had said it, it wouldn’t be a misquotation of the sort under discussion in this post.
• Nor are the misattributions our focus. That Watson apparently didn’t make that foolish prediction is disappointing in a schadenfreude-deflating sort of way, but quotations mistakenly attributed, especially mistakenly attributed to someone famous, are not today’s focus. “Misquotation” in the context of this post requires an original quotation that has somehow been put askew. Sadly, that also rules out the 1981 non-quotation from Bill Gates that “640KB [of storage] ought to be enough for anybody.”³
• Although it does not qualify as a misquotation under these criteria, the claim by Terrel Owens that he was misquoted in his own autobiography is, in my opinion, always worthy of mention, regardless of how tangential the pretext.

The Rules Of Misquotation⁴

Axiom 1: Any quotation that can be altered will be.

Corollary 1A: Vivid words hook misquotes in the mind.
Corollary 1B: Numbers are hard to keep straight.
Corollary 1C: Small changes can have a big impact (or: what a difference an a makes).
Corollary 1D: If noted figures don’t say what needs to be said, we’ll say it for them.
Corollary 1E: Journalists are a less than dependable source of accurate quotes.
Corollary 1F: Famous dead people make excellent commentators on current events.

Axiom 2: Famous quotes need famous mouths.

Corollary 2A: Well-known messengers get credit for clever comments they report from less celebrated mouths.
Corollary 2B: Particularly quotable figures receive more than their share of quotable quotes.
Corollary 2C: Comments made about someone might as well have been said by that person.
Corollary 2D: Who you think said something may depend on where you live.
Corollary 2E: Vintage quotes are considered to be in the public domain.
Corollary 2F: In a pinch, any orphan quote can be called a Chinese proverb.

Emerson’s Hobgoblin & More

This (unfortunately) far from exhaustive list of misquotations includes those violations that, by my casual count, appear to be among the most frequent offenders.

1. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds

This especially common misquotation excludes the vital foolish which modifies “consistency” and radically alters the original meaning of this excerpt from Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Self-Reliance.

While “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, …” restores the original intent, it remains somewhat ambiguous compared to the complete sentence:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.

Indeed, I would argue that the entire paragraph is required to capture Emerson’s fundamental notion:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency, a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with the shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said today.

The most infamous use of this misquotation was by Ayn Rand in her book, Philosophy: Who Needs It, in which she attributed “Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds” to “… a very little mind, Emerson.” It is reported that the error was pointed out, but she refused to correct it.

Emerson may have anticipated such nonsense. Another, less well known quotation of his comes from his Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks, May 1849:

I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.⁵

2. A little learning is a dangerous thing

Alexander Pope wrote in couplets for a reason. The comparison of “A little learning is a dangerous thing” from On Criticism as a free-standing line to the couplet it forms with a second line is instructive:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:

And, including the paired couplets is again an improvement:

A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again.

3. East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet

This line from The Ballad of East and West by Rudyard Kipling is typically dragged out of the cliché closet to be set forth as a poetic declaration that that these two cultures are ultimately irreconcilable, but read in context, the meaning shifts dramatically:

OH, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!

4. Money is the root of all evil

The full quote of the excerpt from 1 Timothy 6:10 is actually

For the love of money is the root of all evil

Even that loses part of the poetry of the full verse:

For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows.⁶

5. Theirs but to do or die

In his version of Charge of the Light Brigade, Lord Tennyson wrote,

Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die, [emphasis mine]

which is, by my accounting,  quite a different thing.

6. Now is the winter of our discontent

In context, these lines from Shakespeare’s Richard III present a different image::

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this son of York.

And One Final, Pertinent Quotation In Its Original Form And Its New, Improved Version

A witty saying proves nothing.
~ Voltaire

A witty saying proves nothing – including this one
~ DrHGuy’s cover of Voltaire’s aphorism

_____________________

1. OK, misunderstood song lyrics require no further attention from me – other than these two points: (1) The line in Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze, ” ‘scuse me while I kiss the sky,” was and is often misheard as ” ‘scuse me while I kiss this guy.” There are numerous witnesses, however, who attended Hendrix concerts after that misunderstanding became well known who testify that Hendrix sometimes deliberately sang the ostensibly errant “kiss this guy” version. (2) Until she was in high school, Julie misheard “Up from the grave he arose” from the Easter hymn as “Up from the gravy he arose.” [↩]
2. I also rank “Those who can do; those who can’t, teach” lower than my patient’s proclamation that “Those who can do; those who can’t, don’t.” [↩]
3. While we’re on the topic, I’ve never been able to find nor has anyone been able to point me to a reference for Freud’s putative clarification that “sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And, neither Yogi Berra or Oscar Wilde, however prolific, could possibly be the sources of all the phrases attributed to them. [↩]
4. This section is excerpted from Nice Guys Finish Seventh: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations by Ralph Keyes, 1992 [↩]
5. Ralph also wrote, “All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients,” which seems as though it should fit in this post but doesn’t. [↩]
6. King James Version [↩]