12 Famous Quotes Everyone Misattributes
This [[Mental Floss]] piece examines a string of well-known lines that are commonly misattributed, tracing their true origins and showing how phrasing and mythmaking altered who gets credit. It opens with [[Jack Swigert]]’s understated [[Apollo 13]] remark and then unpacks examples often wrongly linked to figures such as [[Mark Twain]], [[Benjamin Franklin]], [[Marilyn Monroe]], [[Winston Churchill]], [[Lao Tzu]], [[Machiavelli]], and [[Voltaire]]. The article explains how paraphrase, secondary quoting, literary borrowing, and popular culture — from novelty songs to online repetition — convert tentative attributions into accepted lore, and it cites specific primary sources, like a 1716 play, speeches, essays and biographies, to correct the record. The result is a readable guide to how memorable lines migrate away from their original contexts and acquire simplified, more quotable forms.