It's Better To Remain Silent

'Hemingway Didn't Say That' (And Neither Did Twain Or Kafka)

Author Garson O'Toole has a simple explanation for why quotes are ofttimes wrongly attributed to Marking Twain: "If you preface a quotation by proverb it'due south from Twain, so people are prepared to laugh at it." Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images hibernate caption

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Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images

Author Garson O'Toole has a simple caption for why quotes are often wrongly attributed to Mark Twain: "If you preface a quotation by saying it's from Twain, then people are prepared to laugh at it."

Ernest H. Mills/Getty Images

Earlier this year, the Republican National Committee marked Abraham Lincoln's birthday past sharing a charming, if banal, aphorism attributed to Lincoln: "In the cease, it's not the years in your life that count. Information technology'south the life in your years."

The problem is there's no show Lincoln always wrote or said it, which critics on Twitter were only too delighted to point out. The RNC took downwards the tweet, but all that trouble could have been avoided if they'd first checked in with Garson O'Toole. That's the pen proper name of a man who has tracked downwardly the true origins of hundreds of quotes on his website, Quote Investigator.

O'Toole has collected some of those investigations into a new volume called Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Backside Familiar Quotations. He says, "It'southward a lot of fun to uncover these hidden histories, and I'grand also very glad when I get to give credit to the person who actually said it."

Interview Highlights

On why quotes oftentimes get wrongly attributed to Mark Twain

Marker Twain is known for having a fantastic sense of humour, and if you preface a quotation past proverb information technology's from Twain, then people are prepared to express mirth at information technology, to recollect that it'due south wonderful. Many quotations, they're anonymous or from lesser-known comedians reassigned to Twain. In that location might be a joke and somebody would say information technology's Twain-like and and so the next person will say, "No, actually, it'south from Twain."

Hemingway Didn't Say That

The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations

by Garson O'Toole

Hardcover, 383 pages |

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Title: Hemingway Didn't Say That
Subtitle: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations
Author: Garson O'Toole

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On the origin of the quote "Ameliorate to remain silent and exist thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt," which has been wrongly attributed to both to Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain

The earliest evidence that I was able to discover was a 1907 volume by Maurice Switzer. And information technology seems to contain a lot of original material and it includes the statement "Information technology is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it." And then it'due south slightly different phrasing, just I believe that is what evolved to generate the modern common version.

On the quote past writer Anne Rice that even she mistakenly attributed to Franz Kafka

"Don't bend; don't water it down; don't effort to make it logical; don't edit your own soul co-ordinate to the fashion." ... It was in an introduction to a collection of stories by Franz Kafka, and she was talking about how she'd been inspired by him. It was her perception of the way Kafka thought when he was writing his stories, simply somebody reading that introduction idea that it must accept been Kafka that said this instead of Anne Rice and so information technology started being distributed in that way.

I got an e-mail from an individual who said that on Facebook Anne Rice had posted this quotation and she had attributed it to Kafka. And so that was enormously confusing to me because I idea that if anyone would exist able to recognize that quotation, it would be the person who created information technology. So I sent a Facebook message to Anne Rice; she replied very quickly and said she would look into it to endeavor to discover out who actually created it. And then she came back with another reply saying that she'd discovered that in fact it was her words and that she had written it in this introduction, and equally evidence of that she gave me a URL that pointed to my website. ... And it'south understandable: She's written a large number of words and she'd written this more than a decade in the past.

On why he feels this work is important

Many of these quotations are cultural landmarks. They affect the way we think about, say, environmentalism. Let me find this quote: "We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." That's been attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson; it's considered a Native American saying; an Amish saying. But the primeval evidence I found: At that place'south an activist named Wendell Berry and he was discussing skilful stewardship of the environs ... and I call up he deserves credit for this kind of a cultural landmark.

Editor Melissa Gray and digital producer Nicole Cohen contributed to this story.