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Great Things that Great People Probably Didn’t Say

Vern Scott
5 min readNov 29, 2022

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Though wise quotes have come through the ages from many, there is a phenomenon where they are erroneously applied to a few. Have a strategic war comment? That automatically goes to Napoleon. A proverb or homily? Ben Franklin. A wry or curmudgeonly statement? Try Mark Twain, Sir Winston Churchill, or WC Fields. Here are some of the more famous quotations that these great people so wisely didn’t say….

Perhaps the greatest-ever source for a reliable term paper misquote…

Abraham Lincoln: Who can forget these wise quotes not said by our greatest President?

1) “Whatever you are, be a good one” (thought to have been first stated by William Makepeace Thackery)

2) “You can’t fool all the people all the time” (first stated in 1684 by French author Jacques Abbadie)

3) “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool that to speak and remove all doubt” (a similar quote in the Bible is “”Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue.”)

(Herfuth, 2015)

Mark Twain: Another popular quote machine was Mark Twain, but did he say these things?

1) “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow” (probably Oscar Wilde)

2) “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the…

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Vern Scott
Vern Scott

Written by Vern Scott

Scott lives in the SF Bay Area and writes confidently about Engineering, History, Politics, and Health

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