A review by erin_oriordan_is_reading_again
They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions by John George, Paul F. Boller

4.0

I bought this book in a used bookshop (Selected Works on Michigan Ave. in Chicago) because I thought a lot of the misquoted persons discussed herein would probably be literary. I love a good literary anecdote. There are some in here: Mark Twain, Miguel de Cervantes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Lillian Helman, Robert Frost, and Samuel Pepys are some of the writers mentioned in this book. However, it has much less to do with literature and much more to do with politics. A surprising number of these misquotes, mis-attributions, and misleading attributions were done intentionally for polemic purposes, to give the impression that a well-known name either supported or opposed one's position. This book was first published in 1989, but disgustingly enough, some of these fabrications are still making the rounds of the Internet (and talk radio shows, and YouTube videos, et al.) in 2016. This book is very much still worth a read. Fans of Ronald Reagan might want to check it out so you can see how often your hero "quoted" authorities with words made up by his speechwriters. Politics has always been dirty, dirty business.