With all the wonderful things Twain actually said and wrote available like never before, why would people want to cheapen his reputation by making him say things he never said?
My guess is that they don't really know Twain as a writer, they just know that he's famous, ergo anything with his name on it has weight. And then there's the ubiquity of bogus quotations everywhere on the Internet and most people don't bother to check for the source.
Update: the quote is back on Goodreads, correctly labeled as mis-attributed but falsely labeled as source-unknown. They obviously care more about clicks than truth.
maybe people think attribution to the most quotable man in history will give the words weight. Also an excellent point Lev. If something doesn't sound right, it likely isn't
This is accurate. Well stated. But doubtless readers believed Twain wrote those quotes because they wanted it to be true. Nothing interferes with thinking like wanting a result. Not to get political, but we live in an age when no one can think.
With all the wonderful things Twain actually said and wrote available like never before, why would people want to cheapen his reputation by making him say things he never said?
My guess is that they don't really know Twain as a writer, they just know that he's famous, ergo anything with his name on it has weight. And then there's the ubiquity of bogus quotations everywhere on the Internet and most people don't bother to check for the source.
My favorite fake quote was attributed to John Milton: "A smile is as good as a vacation."
What!?!?!?
It was later corrected to a more likely author: Milton Berle. They got it half-right, I guess.
Milton, Schmilton, as long as we keep smiling. :-)
LOL
"W for Wikiquote": LIQ*
* (laughing inside quietly)
Well done!
The other frequently quoted person I'm starting to question is Albert Einstein.
Oscar Wilde gets his share of false attributions, too, and so does George Eliot. That's why I like Quote Investigator.
I just bookmarked Quote Investigator to save myself the embarrassment of misattributed quotes or never-said quotes.
George Eliot is also misquoted as saying “It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” She never said it. That one was started by Goodreads.
Thanks for the Snopes reference. I didn’t know about it.
I blogged about that Eliot "quote" some years ago and about contacting Goodreads: https://www.levraphael.com/blog/bogus-author-quotes/
Update: the quote is back on Goodreads, correctly labeled as mis-attributed but falsely labeled as source-unknown. They obviously care more about clicks than truth.
Yup.
maybe people think attribution to the most quotable man in history will give the words weight. Also an excellent point Lev. If something doesn't sound right, it likely isn't
The problem is that not enough people have a good ear/wide-enough reading experience to distinguish real from bogus.
This is accurate. Well stated. But doubtless readers believed Twain wrote those quotes because they wanted it to be true. Nothing interferes with thinking like wanting a result. Not to get political, but we live in an age when no one can think.
If they don't know him as a writer, they should. He was one of the best of all time.
Agreed. Witty and wise. His essay on the challenges and quirks of the German language is one of many classics.
That's exactly it: they don't pass the smell test.