Oh, the irony! I intended to open this column with this quote: “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.” I thought it was Winston Churchill’s, but the search engine turned up Mark Twain. Scroll down, turns out it belongs to neither. It’s one of those many misquotations that are oft cited and falsely attributed.
This has become so prevalent that there’s even a park in Denver dedicated to literary sayings where mistakes abound. According to a Denver Post article, Lowry Reading Garden has misquoted or misattributed Yogi Berra, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Groucho Marx. As journalist Elizabeth Hernandez writes: The park demonstrates “the danger in relying on search engine(s) to divine a quote’s provenance.”
Another irony: The internet has made it easier to verify things — but also to spread falsehoods. In today’s parlance, a lie can be retweeted hundreds of thousands of times before the truth is posted.
One of the reasons may be confirmation bias. When we read a “fact” or comment that bolsters our view, especially when it’s witty or pithy, we’re quick to share it because the truth seems so evident.
Aphorisms and adages are particularly effective tools for summing up worldviews and values. We all love a clever quote that seems spot on.
Recently I read the following observation, attributed to Albert Einstein: “A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it.” How insightful! — but, it doesn’t seem Einstein ever uttered these words, though a variant is attributed to another famous Jew, Abba Eban.
In a 1969 article in the Philadelphia Daily News, Eban is quoted as saying: “A clever man attempts to get out of a situation which a wise man never got into in the first place.” The earliest known instance is only one day earlier, in the Jewish Journal (New Jersey).
One wonders if both journalists attended the same event where Eban was overheard. Either way, Einstein died in 1955, so it doesn’t look likely that he’s the origin. No surprise really, because to paraphrase the podcast Professor Buzzkill, Einstein, along with Churchill, Gandhi and Twain, make up the Mount Rushmore of Misquotation.
So next time you come across an “aha” quote, enjoy it — but verify it.
Shana Goldberg may be reached at [email protected]
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