Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Book ·303 of 348
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
They never said that.
What people say
"To be great is to be misunderstood."
What was actually said
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds … Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood." Ralph Waldo Emerson — "Self-Reliance" (1841)
Why it stuck
Correct as the final sentence — but reliably detached from Emerson's argument. The "foolish consistency" line (two sentences earlier) is the other celebrity pullquote. Together they are one paragraph; the internet treats them as separate Emerson aphorisms.
The essay is about the courage of intellectual independence, not about being misunderstood as a feature.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.