I Fear The Day.. By Einstein (Meaningful Misquotes #3)

I'm sure we've all seen this one. Its usually pinned or shared on facebook, sometimes with an image of young teens bent over their phones, not talking with each other unless it's through text messages. People who pin it will often comment things like "SO TRUE!" 

The problem is of course, there is no record of him saying this. Einstein has to be one of the most misquoted historian figures of all times (along with such people as Plato). The quote unfortunately can not be traced back to him, and is not found in The Ultimate Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice, who is a renowned Einstein expert. 

A bit of research also pulled up this collection of tweets from Waldo Jaquith where he was able to track down the original source of the quote, and it appears to have originated from a downloadable (and questionable) app for your phone. The app in no way sites it sources for the quote, so I'd be pretty skeptical about ANY quotes from this app. 

Plato's Popular Quotes (Meaningful Misquotes Quote #2)

Ah yes, this quote. I'll be frank, I'm not usually one for inspirational quotes, but this is one of the few I honestly really like. I've seen a lot of quotes on Pinterest that are attributed to Plato, and a friend was asking about another quote which sent me searching. Turns out a lot of Plato's quotes that you see on Pinterest aren't actually Plato's... go figure.

Over at Quote Investigator, O'Toole looks at the history of this quote. Turns out the first record of it was in 1897, and was penned by a man named John Watson who published under the name of Ian Maclaren:

“IAN MACLAREN,” along with other celebrities, was asked to send a Christmas message to an influential religious weekly in England. He responded by sending the short but striking sentence: “Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard battle.” No message is more needed in our days of stress and storm, of selfish striving and merciless competition.

I'm sure we've all seen this one as well on Pinterest and on Facebook.

But at Honey and Locusts, John actually traces down the original text from Plato:

“Laws are made to instruct the good, and in the hope that there may be no need of them; also to control the bad, whose hardness of heart will not be hindered from crime.” [Book IX]

Which when broken into layman's terms sounds kinda like the quote we've all seen, but knowing how Plato thought seems to actually push the quote into a different direction. As John says in his post about the Plato quotes:

"While it’s true that Plato did say something vaguely similar in, I think the paraphrase misrepresents what Plato was really saying. The “good” need the law, both for instruction in what is right, and for the restraining of the “bad'"

So there you go. I'm sure there are probably dozens, if not hundreds of quotes on the internet that are miscredited, this is merely one of many. But if you're interested in reading more of Plato's work, you can either download a free copy over at Archive.org or buy it on Amazon.

It Is Better to Light a Candle.. (Meaningful Misquotes #1)

Ah yes, the infamous meaningful quotes. They are everywhere on Pinterest. Full disclosure - I usually find these sort of things to be silly. They don't motivate me, they usually make me laugh or roll my eyes. Having said that, when I saw this one, I had to share. 

Did Mrs. Roosevelt really say this? Maybe. But the person who coined the saying is actually Peter Beneson, the founder of Amnesty International. He said it at a Human Rights Day ceremony on Dec 10, 1961. Mrs. Roosevelt passed away in 1962, so she may have said it, but it was in fact Mr. Beneson who first said it publicly and made the saying famous. (source: phrase.org)

 Reminds me a lot of this famous quote actually: 

Right on Mr. Lincoln. Right on.