The myth behind notable quotables

The title of this blog post refers to a notable quotable supposedly made by George Washington in reference to chopping down his father's cherry tree, "I cannot tell a lie. I did it with my little hatchet."

There's one little problem. Washington's famous quote - which was written by an early biographer, Parson Weems, in 1806 - is probably a lie. There's no proof that the man who grew up to be the first American president did not cut down his father's cherry tree, except a 200-year-old anecdote with questionable roots.

But this is not the first time that a notable quotable wasn't so notable and didn't deserve to be quotable.

Louis Menard has written a great piece in the Books section of The New Yorker on this very topic. The first paragraph of Menard's review is intriguing in itself:

"Sherlock Holmes never said “Elementary, my dear Watson.” Neither Ingrid Bergman nor anyone else in “Casablanca” says “Play it again, Sam”; Leo Durocher did not say “Nice guys finish last”; Vince Lombardi did say “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing” quite often, but he got the line from someone else. Patrick Henry almost certainly did not say “Give me liberty, or give me death!”; William Tecumseh Sherman never wrote the words “War is hell”; and there is no evidence that Horace Greeley said “Go west, young man.” Marie Antoinette did not say “Let them eat cake”; Hermann Göring did not say “When I hear the word ‘culture,’ I reach for my gun”; and Muhammad Ali did not say “No Vietcong ever called me nigger.” Gordon Gekko, the character played by Michael Douglas in “Wall Street,” does not say “Greed is good”; James Cagney never says “You dirty rat” in any of his films; and no movie actor, including Charles Boyer, ever said “Come with me to the Casbah.” Many of the phrases for which Winston Churchill is famous he adapted from the phrases of other people, and when Yogi Berra said “I didn’t really say everything I said” he was correct."

I'm not going to spoil the rest of the article, except to say that many quotations you have heard in your life have gone through some interesting modification and/or storytelling. It's a good piece, so take a look at it.