They never said that.

Why it stuck Carlyle's English translation of the Swiss-German saying used the archaic "silvern" not "silver." The -n fell off in 20th-century quotation.

The Swiss original ("Reden ist silbern, Schweigen ist golden") appears in Johann Paul Friedrich Richter and earlier Arabic sources.

Why it stuck Jobs was quoting — "on the back cover of their final issue … they had … the words, 'Stay hungry. Stay foolish.'" — the Whole Earth Catalog's farewell, Stewart Brand's slogan from 1974. Jobs is closing with someone else's words, and that context is almost always dropped.

The "stay foolish" line belongs to Stewart Brand, not Jobs. It is the Whole Earth Catalog's signoff, not Apple's.

Why it stuck Forrest Gump (1994) reshaped the older "handsome is as handsome does" into a line about intelligence — it echoes the older structure but retargets the moral.

Chaucer's Wife of Bath glosses the idea: "he is gentil that dooth gentil dedis."

Why it stuck Darwin preferred "natural selection." He added Spencer's phrase to the fifth edition of Origin (1869) as a synonym — but it wasn't his coinage.

Why it stuck Nietzsche wrote the aphorism in the first person singular — "what does not kill me makes me stronger." The "us" plural is a 20th-century inspirational rewording.

The chapter heading — "From the Military School of Life" — is usually ignored. Nietzsche framed the line as a soldier's aphorism, not a universal rule.

Why it stuck Without the "a", the line is nonsense — "man" and "mankind" mean the same thing. Armstrong insisted he said "a"; the audio is ambiguous.

Audio analysis in 2006 found acoustic evidence consistent with the missing "a."

Why it stuck Armstrong insisted for decades that he said "for a man" — the "a" makes "man" contrast with "mankind." Acoustic analysis (2006, Peter Shann Ford) supported him. The transmitted audio is ambiguous; NASA now prints both.

Without the "a," "man" and "mankind" mean the same thing and the sentence collapses.

Why it stuck MLK paraphrased Parker in 1958 and again in 1965. The polished quote always appears in King's voice; Parker's older, more hedged version is forgotten.

Why it stuck Wellington was not even at Eton during his schooling. He attended briefly as a child and hated it. The quote appears four years after his death, in a book about English national character — it is almost certainly Montalembert's invention.

The actual Eton playing fields did not exist in Wellington's school days. The quote is physically impossible as well as textually unsourced.

Why it stuck Steinbeck's 1937 novel title preserved "Mice and Men" but substituted "plans" for Burns's "schemes."

Why it stuck The "covenant"/"womb" extended version has no historical source — it's a 1994 invention by Albert Jack Nunberg (widely republished) intended as a corrective and mistaken for an original. The original 12th-century proverb was about literal blood and water, no covenants.

The myth of the "full" form is now so widespread that dictionaries note it explicitly.

Why it stuck Colonists in 1775 still thought of themselves as British — "the British" would have been incoherent. "Regulars" meant British army troops specifically.

Revere's ride was also meant to be quiet; shouting would have alerted British patrols.

Why it stuck Colonists in 1775 considered themselves British. Revere used "Regulars" — British Army regulars, as opposed to militia. "British are coming" is a post-independence retroactive framing.

Revere's 1798 letter to Jeremy Belknap gives the exact language. The "one if by land, two if by sea" couplet is Longfellow (1861), not Revere.

Why it stuck Correct. But the phrase is often cited as a general American idiom rather than Truman's personal motto. The desk sign is the origin; poker slang (the "buck" as dealer's marker) is the source.

The sign is preserved at the Truman Library. The other side read, "I'm from Missouri."

Why it stuck The qualifier "in matters of taste" narrows the claim to preferences — colour, fit, style. Dropping it makes customers right about everything, including policy.

The longer form is sometimes called apocryphal; earliest recorded uses are simply the shorter slogan.

Why it stuck No Einstein letter, essay, or recording contains the phrase. The earliest verified print appearance is a 12-step programme pamphlet. The Einstein attribution appears around 1987.

Einstein is the standard "wisdom magnet" — aphorisms with no known author drift to him over time.

Why it stuck The original phrase was affirming — careful craftsmanship, beauty in specificity. The "devil" swap reverses the meaning into a warning about fine print. Both forms now circulate in business English.

Warburg's seminar-room version, in German ("Der liebe Gott steckt im Detail"), is probably the earliest attested form. None of the attributed sources' archives contain the "devil" inversion.

Why it stuck Correct modernised version — but "catcheth" is the 17th-century form. And the American second half, "but the second mouse gets the cheese," is a 1990s invention, not an original couplet.

John Ray was an English naturalist; his proverb book is one of the earliest anthologies of its kind in English.

Why it stuck The Prince (1532) argues that results matter more than methods, but Machiavelli never compresses it into this sentence. The phrase is Ovid's, via later translators.

Closest source is Ovid's Heroides (c. 20 BCE): "exitus acta probat."

Why it stuck "As such" is load-bearing — Fukuyama meant the end of ideological evolution, not events. Dropping it let critics mock a claim he didn't make.

Why it stuck In the original legal Latin, "probat" means "tests." The modern English gloss uses "proves" in its everyday sense — giving the proverb an impossible-looking logic.

Why it stuck Correct as words. But the speaker is a rebel conspirator plotting to overthrow civil order — killing the lawyers is the first step in ending due process. Shakespeare is praising the profession by having its destruction be the criminals' aim. The modern anti-lawyer quote flips the meaning.

The American Bar Association has repeatedly cited this context as a defence of the profession. It is literally what the line does in the play.

Why it stuck The modern English form appears as "The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" in a 1917 Raymond Hubbell song. Ovid's agricultural original is 19 centuries older and about crops, not lawns.

The song, "The Grass Is Always Greener (In the Other Fellow's Yard)," was a Tin Pan Alley hit.

Why it stuck Kevin Spacey's character quotes a close approximation in The Usual Suspects (1995). Most speakers attribute the line to the film, not Baudelaire's prose poem.

Why it stuck "Methinks" does heavy lifting — it frames the whole line as opinion. Dropping it changes a cautious observation into a verdict.

Why it stuck Isaiah named the wolf, not the lion. The mistake is partly because lions appear in the next verse ("And the lion shall eat straw like the ox," 11:7). Memory merges the two images.

The Peaceable Kingdom iconography — lion and lamb — is post-biblical, via Edward Hicks's Quaker paintings (1820s–40s).

Why it stuck McLuhan's 1967 follow-up "The Medium is the Massage" is a typesetter's pun he kept, not a misprint.

Why it stuck The modern tag drops the beatitude frame — "blessed are" — which anchors the promise in divine approval, not cosmic inevitability.

Echoes Psalm 37:11, which the Septuagint renders with similar wording.

Why it stuck Popularly attributed to Burke. Not in his works. The nearest Burke passage is about honest men standing aside.

Why it stuck Burke never wrote the quoted sentence. His nearest statement is the 1770 passage above. The modern form first appears — without attribution — in the 1910s.

John Stuart Mill wrote something closer ("Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends…") in 1867. Burke did not.

Why it stuck Truman said something very close during Merle Miller's interviews, but the exact "only thing new" phrasing is polished retrospect. Miller's book made it famous.

Why it stuck The famous line ends cleanly, but FDR kept going with three qualifiers. Dropping them converts a specific diagnosis of panic into a vague maxim.

Why it stuck Often "quoted" without the second half ("if you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle"), which was the point of the passage.

Why it stuck Bulwer-Lytton's Cardinal Richelieu delivers the line; a stage play turned it into a proverb.

Why it stuck The earliest English form imagines the pot speaking. Modern usage freezes it as a third-person description — the dialogue that made the proverb bite is lost.

Why it stuck "Proof" here means "test" (as in proofreading). The truncated modern form is mystifying — proof is "in" the pudding how? — because the original verb of testing is missing.

Why it stuck The militia clause is often cut. Whether that clause is constitutive of the right or merely preambular has been a legal debate since the 19th century.

District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) read the preamble as non-restrictive; dissents disagreed.

Why it stuck The earliest form talks about what hell is full of. The paving metaphor appears in English around 1670 — same idea, more visual, and much more memorable.

Why it stuck The line floats free today. Emerson was writing specifically about Lexington and Concord, 19 April 1775.

Why it stuck Humphrey Bogart rewords it in The Maltese Falcon (1941) — "the stuff that dreams are made of" — and the film line overtook the Shakespearean original in popular memory.

Why it stuck Francisco de Quevedo used the phrase for Spain in 1620. The British Empire inherited the line, and later speakers have forgotten the Spanish original.

The phrase also appears briefly for the Holy Roman and Achaemenid empires.

Why it stuck The modern tag drops the dependent clause — knowing precedes freeing. The biblical sequence matters theologically.

Carved on the CIA headquarters lobby in Langley, Virginia.

Why it stuck Earliest print is 1942. Ernie Pyle and William Cummings are both claimed as originators; neither is confirmed.

Why it stuck Twain credited Disraeli; no Disraeli source exists. The phrase was in British print by 1891.

Why it stuck Bradford, imprisoned in the Tower, supposedly said it watching condemned men pass. "Go I" is the modern form; the original third-person use names himself.

Why it stuck The modern tag strips the parallel first half. The full line has a cyclic, almost despairing rhythm — "that which is done" mirroring "that which shall be."

Why it stuck Dryden's couplet says "thin partitions" and "near allied" — a narrow zone, not a crisp line. The modern pop-psych version replaces the architectural image with a geometric one.

Often also attributed to Aristotle or Seneca — neither used the phrase.

Why it stuck Hannum owned the fake "Cardiff Giant" petrified man. When Barnum made a second fake and outdrew the crowds, Hannum is said to have used the line — about Barnum's customers. Barnum stole the credit.

No contemporary source records Barnum himself saying it.

Why it stuck Correct as printed — but the MGM line is word-for-word from L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel. The film almost always gets the credit and the novel never does.

Baum used the phrase repeatedly in his book. The film borrowed it and made it a catchphrase.

Why it stuck Wilde's version is sharper and more specific. The simplified misquote is sometimes also attributed to P.T. Barnum, with no primary source.