Have you noticed that false quotes often sound right – sometimes more correct than actual quotes? There is a reason for that. Our brains really like fluency or experiencing cognitive ease (as opposed to cognitive load) in absorbing and retrieving information. The smoother the experience of reading a quote – or the easier it is to understand, the smoother it seems, the more it comes to mind – the less likely we are to question the actual quote. These fake quotes that sound right only take this trend to the next step: cleaning up the quotes, so to speak, so to make them softer, more citable, easier to store, and retrievable at a later date. We can`t even intentionally misquote, but once we do, the result tends to be more eye-catching than the original. In the world of speeches and speakers, especially historical ones, persistent misquotation is understandable. You hear a speech. You remember or mishear a line as a little more colorful than it was. If you`re a journalist – especially in the pre-recording era when all the notes were taken by hand – you can type this fake memory into an article. Several versions are circulating.
And so on. The last type of false quote in the “more fluid” category is the most blatant. In fact, it largely reworks the original line, usually shortening or simplifying — and while the result is undoubtedly superior from a purely oratorical standpoint (as in, it looks more dramatic and is more likely to stick in your head), it also deviates from the original to an alarming degree. Take Thomas Carlyle`s oft-quoted gem from his life of Frederick the Great: “Genius is an infinite capacity to make an effort.” Isn`t that nice? A simple and powerful definition. Except that, Carlyle wrote, “The good plan itself does not come by itself; It is the fruit of genius (which means, above all, a transcendent ability to endure difficulties). Not quite the same, right? (But just try to remember the real monster of a sentence if you need a good quote to bring home a point.) Of course, the other common reason for misquotation is simple laziness. We think we remember something and just write it down instead of spending time checking it. Or we like the way a phrase sounds or the message it has, and so we just assume that our source (probably online) is correct – and the more websites with the error, the more convincing it becomes – rather than painfully finding the original to check for ourselves. How sayings in books, movies, and speeches are poorly remembered Finally, consider removing the introduction altogether. If you were to start a discussion about Alexander with “Nothing but blood, sweat, and spears,” any educated person would recognize the bastardization involved.
As one overly literal commentator pointed out, this is not an entirely correct use of “paraphrase,” meaning that you retain the original meaning, but you actually do the opposite, keeping most of the words but reusing the passage a bit. In an overtly humorous context, however, this is perfectly acceptable. In fact, consider an outright lie: but perhaps the most common victim of this type of mistake is William Shakespeare, whose lines often look like something else — and something that`s often easier to remember later than the original. In Hamlet, it is often said that the prince is described as “born at the manor”. Only when Hamlet refers to himself is he born for the way. This alone makes little sense, a likely reason for the persistence of the mansion. But take it in its full context – “But in my opinion, although I am a native here/And born this way, it is a custom/more honored in violation than observance” – and it becomes quite clear what the prince is trying to say. 2001 – This Old House – In apologizing to Robert Frost, border expert Walter Robillard says, “Good fences on the right line make good neighbours.” You say you`re looking for a “way to say you`re changing a famous phrase slightly but intentionally.” Breaking this down, it seems that the change would be obvious, leaving the need to clarify that it was made intentionally and not out of ignorance. To misdescribe an idea, opinion, or situation, often to gain an advantage.
A riff is a catchy musical phrase, often like the opening of a song or solo in jazz and rock. To rifle on someone or something is to improvise from existing musical phrases. This meaning has extended to other areas, for example stand-up comedy, where spiritual monologues are often referred to as riffs. www.english-for-students.com/with-apologies-to.html Can be used colloquially to represent someone else`s idea and then easily modify it to customize it, as in this part of It`s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. In some, it`s a simplification or contraction of something that`s a little more chaotic without remembering it. “Treat me, Scotty!” was never uttered by a Star Trek character. “Beam us up, Mr. Scott!” was in the “Gamesters of Triskelion” in 1968. Similarly, Humphrey Bogart`s iconic “Play it again, Sam” was actually: “If she can handle it, I can. Play it. Note that in both cases, the meaning remains fundamentally the same.
The adjustments are minor. These are not blatant misquotes, but attempts to make things sound the way they should sound on some level. These fake quotes are in the “Well, that`s what I wanted to say — and maybe even how I wanted to say it.” “A disturbing reef on Cinderella`s story” – Daria Donnelly But to misquote an old financial saying, the housing market can remain irrational longer than you`re willing to stay homeless. And poor Mark Twain. He seems to have said everything there is to say in the world. Some of my favorite lines turn out to be purely apocryphal, like “I`d rather go to bed naked with Lillian Russell than with Ulysses S. Grant in full military insignia” and “Quitting smoking is easy. I`ve done it hundreds of times. Other good words are actually not originally quoted by Twain, but by him (Twain always gave the source to his credit; his listeners and readers paid less attention to it.) “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics,” for example, according to Twain, was an invention of Benjamin Disraeli, and “Wagner`s music is better than it sounds” was written by Edgar Wilson Nye. Twain was a funny man, but unfortunately, he didn`t say everything.
(But quotes, like Lincoln`s, stick because they make sense; the greater the cognitive ease, the more superficial and less suspect the thought. Why ask when we have no reason to believe something is wrong?) Then there are those quotes that aren`t technically wrong — unless they`re attributed to a literary character when they were actually said by his movie colleague. These, too, are not malicious; In many cases, our mind simply remembers poorly. Especially if the line of a film has the fluidity that our memories love so much, we might completely forget that the source was the film and not the book. In this bucket falls Sherlock Holmes` most memorable line, “Elementary, my dear Watson”, which was never written by Arthur Conan Doyle, but comes from the 1929 film. (Although this is the first line of Holmes that most fans probably think of.) Here too, we placed Dracula`s famous “I want to suck your blood” – no words ever written by Bram Stoker. For example, I got used to my opinions being distorted in the press. “False quotes are often stickier than actual quotes,” Abraham Lincoln joked.
He didn`t really do it, of course, but he would be an excellent spokesperson for feelings, considering the number of times his words have been mismemorized, miscast, and passed from person to person in a way that bears little resemblance to his actual statements. (In fact, Mark Twain would be a better candidate for that.