While not quite a misquote, people get the famous Oppenheimer "now I am become death, destroyer of worlds" quote wrong in two major ways. One is that they often think he said this when the bomb went off — he didn't (and never claimed to, he only claimed he thought it). The other is that they think he is actually claiming that he has "become death, destroyer of worlds," when in actuality he is referring to a much more complicated piece of the Gita, and by analogy it is the bomb that is death, destroyer of worlds (which makes more sense), and Oppenheimer is just the awed witness. (Lots more discussion of that, here.)

This, of course, is separate from the issue that Oppenheimer's own translation of the Sanskrit is highly idiosyncratic, and not a common one at all.

"Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." - NOT by Mozart

This quote is frequently attributed to Mozart, but was actually from an autograph/entry in his souvenir book by the Baron Nikolaus von Jacquin.

Mozart rarely got quite so, ah, poetically sappy in his own reflections, and almost certainly would not have boiled down the process of his own hard work into something as ethereal as "love."

I'm actually curious regarding the many witty quotes attributed to Winston Churchill, most of which seem to be anecdotal in their sourcing. Has anyone ever done a study of them to see how many he actually said?

One oft-cited failing of the British Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig was his unimaginative neglect of the machine gun as an important weapon during the First World War. This quote, widely attributed to him, is regularly offered in evidence of this:

"The machine gun is a much-overrated weapon and two per battalion would be more than sufficient." (Usually cited as coming from Haig in 1915, but taken as definitive of his perspective as a whole)

The claim that Haig was blindly opposed to machine guns flies in the face of numerous other well-attested declarations by him from both before and after the statement above was purported to have been made.

The genesis of this claim does not lie in any of Haig's own documents, first and foremost; the sole attestation of it comes from the memoirs of one Christopher Baker-Carr (From Chauffeur to Brigadier, 1930), a major who was put in charge of the BEF's new machine gun school in November of 1914. Baker-Carr's narrative of his early days with this academy is one of consistent frustration with the army's general staff, who apparently resisted his suggested innovations every step of the way. John Terraine, in an amazing chapter in The Smoke and the Fire (1980), has pretty definitively shown that this narrative is rather unlikely in its own right, as all existing records apart from Baker-Carr's memoirs indicate that the general staff basically did everything he suggested very quickly in spite of any reservations they might have had. I mention this not to put a slight on Baker-Carr himself, who was a remarkably interesting and accomplished person, but rather to establish that his memoirs may not be the most reliable account of all that transpired and that a great deal of personal pique seems to have made its way into them.

To give an example of this fantasticality which is essential to the quote being discussed, at some point in late December of 1914 Baker-Carr forwarded an urgent suggestion to the staff that the number of machine guns deployed among front-line battalions should be doubled. He describes in anger having received a number of seemingly unaccommodating notes in return, including one from "an army commander" saying that "the machine-gun was a much over-rated weapon and two per battalion were more than sufficient." We'll return to this in a few seconds, as it is the main focus of this post, but I will note first that the staff generals, contrary to Baker-Carr's unhappy declarations in his memoirs, took his advice and doubled the guns by February of 1915. A mere two-month turnaround on doubling the number of guns among all front-line battalions -- at the urging of an untested officer representing a new training school -- would not seem to suggest foot-dragging or indifference on the staff's part, and this is even more apparent when manufacturing limitations are considered.

By 1914 the Maxim was already on the way out. Both the British and the Germans were using the heavy, outdated 1908 model, and the onset of the war inspired a flurry of redesign. For the British this took the form of the new Vickers and Lewis guns; the former was far more reliable when it came to the problem of over-heating, and the latter was much, much more portable than any previous widely-adopted design. The Germans stuck with the Maxims when it came to arming static gun emplacements, but also developed a portable counterpart to the Lewis, the Bergmann.

At the war's outset, the available machine guns would have been hard to widely distribute for anyone involved even if they did understand the weapon's merits. The allocation of machine guns per infantry battalion was indeed two -- two, that is, for roughly a thousand men. This was a matter of unhappy necessity rather than contented policy, however, as even though the War Office had placed a production order with Vickers for 196 new machine guns after the first week of the war, Vickers could only produce ten to twelve such guns per week. It took time for the infrastructure necessary for widescale production to be developed, and it is in this context that any early-war statements on gun distribution should be considered.

First, Baker-Carr does not even explicitly say that it was Haig who said it -- only "an army commander." Insisting that this refers to Haig requires some stretches. The first is that he meant "army commander" in a literal rather than general sense; just prior to the war, the numerous men to whom his brief was addressed would have been referred to as corps commanders -- "army commander" was a necessary creation to accommodate the vast expansion of the army in wartime, but was still often used in lieu of "corps commander" on a casual basis in spite of it having become a formal rank. Which would mean that, in addition to just the two formal Army Commanders (note the capitals), who were Horace Smith-Dorrien and Douglas Haig, the comment could be referring to any of the following:

• Charles Monro of I Corps
• Charles Fergusson of II Corps
• William Pulteney of III Corps
• Henry Rawlinson of IV Corps
• Herbert Plumer of V Corps
• And John French, the Commander-in-Chief

There was also Edmund Allenby of the Cavalry Corps, but it seems very unlikely that his word on the subject would have mattered enough to Baker-Carr to put him out as much as he suggests. The comment -- assuming it is being properly ascribed -- could have come from any of them.

The reader may, at this point, reasonably ask why it couldn't have been Horace Smith-Dorrien who provided the quote above. The main thing militating against this is that he -- like Haig, as we shall shortly see -- had been and would continue to be an enthusiastic supporter of the machine gun throughout the war; nevertheless, unlike Haig, his career was abruptly terminated in 1915 after a personal falling-out with Sir John French. He is remembered primarily for his fortuitous decision to have II Corps turn and stand at Le Cateau during the retreat from Mons, and his subsequent nine months as a general preceded any of the parts of the war that are generally conceived of as being so catastrophically dumb. He never had to preside over subsequent, less-flashily-satisfying campaigns (like Loos, or the Somme, or Arras, or Passchendaele), and nobody consequently found it necessary to develop lurid conspiracies about his callousness, his incompetence, his lack of imagination, his barbarity, etc. etc., into which some later claim about an ignorance of the value of a certain weapon could be so easily integrated.

Haig's own documents, by contrast, whether they be letters, dispatches or personal journals, are unequivocal in their support of machine guns as a necessary and much-desired innovation. He took time out of his leave in January of 1898 to visit the Enfield gun works and see in both production and action the Maxim machine guns that they were then producing; his opinion of this weapon's usefulness can be seen in extracts from his written works. Nothing he has written on the subject suggests any other attitude towards machine guns than that of serious respect.

From his report on an ambush he experienced while serving in the Sudan in March of 1898, barely two months later:

The Horse Artillery against enemy of this sort is no use. We felt the want of machineguns when working alongside of scrub for searching some of the tracks.

From his Review of the Work Done During the Training Season 1912, a document aimed at bettering the proficiency of the cavalry:

More attention should be paid to the handling of cavalry machineguns when brigaded. Their drill and manoeuvre should, before departure to practice camp, attain a high standard of efficiency.

From the agenda for a conference among the senior officers of I Corps on August 20, 1914:

German machine-guns are said to be well commanded; the French are believed to have lost heavily by attacking them with infantry.

From a letter to his nephew, Oliver, November 1914:

You must not fret because you are not out here. There will be a great want of troops, and numbers are wanted. So I expect you will all soon be in the field. Meantime train your machine guns. It will repay you.

[Note: It was around this time that the new Vickers machine gun had come into production and the BEF was in the awkward process of transferring over to it from the older, bulkier Maxim model]

From Haig's notes on a meeting between himself and Major-General Bannatine-Allason of the 51st Territorial Division in May of 1915:

Infantry peace-training was little use in teaching a company how to capture a house occupied by half a dozen machine-guns. [Bannatine-Allason] should urge his men to operate at wide intervals, and use cover and try to bring a converging fire on the locality attacked. We should also use our machine-guns as much as possible.

By the next month, in a conference with then-Minister of Munitions David Lloyd George, Haig had already moved on from discussing the virtues of the guns that did exist to urging the manufacture of much lighter models -- which, in the event, did end up existing in the form of the far-more-portable Lewis guns. In other venues he was showing a similar and insatiable interest in technological innovation; he cherished the aerial photography of the front lines which the RFC was able to provide him, and he was so enthusiastic about the possibilities afforded by the new "tanks" in 1916 that he may with some justice be said to have pushed them into action too early. Even after their less than ideal debut at Flers, he placed an order for another thousand of the things to be delivered as swiftly as possible -- another hope quashed by practical limitations. There is nothing in any of this that seems reconcilable with the absurdity attributed to him in the oft-cited quote.

Not a misquote, but as someone who's favorite work of literature is Paradise Lost, it agitates me that a lot of stuff people believe about Christianity comes from that poem and is stuff that was NEVER in the Bible.

Off the top of my head:

-The concept of Lucifer as an evil, fallen angel instead of the prosecutor to God's judge

-the fact that angels look like people with wings and not giant freaky animal heads

-the entire war in heaven

I'm not sure if the idea that the forbidden fruit was an apple originated in Paradise Lost, but it certainly helped perpetuate it.

The poem is such a beautiful, tragic tale of individuality vs. authority, what constitutes oppression, and how easy it is to lose sight of what you once were and what you once wanted. Way too many people just look at is as a story of god working in mysterious ways.

I work in both literature and history, so I hope this is okay to post. There is this quote floating around sites like pinterest and instagram that is mis-attributed to Shakespeare, "When I saw you I fell in love, and you smiled because you knew." (Real author: Arrigo Boito, early 20th Century poet and opera lyricist.)

This one drives me fucking nuts. It does not even sound like Shakespeare. Very simple search of his works would lead you to conclude it's not there. You just look uneducated and stupid.

Also part of the issue for me, is that it seems like this alludes to Shakespeare being the only classic/romantic-ish writer that people vaguely know. Also, what would be wrong with still posting the beautiful words on your pinterest/instagram/wedding invite and citing the correct, lesser-known author?

To be fair, the opera the quote is from does find inspiration from The Merry Wives of Windsor and King Henry IV... but still.

/shudder

EDIT: missing word

"Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small."

I first heard this quote attributed to Henry Kissinger. Then, I learned that a lot of people attributed it to Wallace Stanley Sayre (a Professor of Political Science at Columbia University). I found this website, which suggests that the idea, although not the precise quote, goes back to Samuel Johnson in 1765. The quote first starts appearing in writing in the early 1970s. These instances suggest that it was already a saying in general circulation and was attributed to various people.

One that's always bothered me is attributed to Ben Franklin: "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy" or some iteration thereof, seen far too often in bars and restaurants.

The real quote is far more eloquent and substantial from a letter he wrote in 1779:

"Behold the rain which descends from heaven upon our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to be changed into wine, a constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy."

Now I don't know how it came to be, but I'd love it if someone more knowledgeable had some insight here.

"The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic" is commonly attributed to Joseph Stalin. He never said this, and the true origin is unknown (though it might be "The Black Obelisk" by Erich Maria Remarque).
Another quote attributed to him is "No man, no problem". Just like the infamous "Let them eat cake" misquote, Stalin has only said that in a book by his foe, namely, "Children of the Arbat" by Anatoly Rybakov, written in 1987.

Past features have allowed us to cross the 20-year limit, so let me share the most famous misattribution connected to Alaska (and feel free to delete it if you feel it's appropriate):

"I can see Russia from my house."

You'd be surprised how many people think Sarah Palin actually said that line. In fact, it was a line uttered by comedienne Tina Fey on "Saturday Night Live" during a 2008 sketch.

The misattribution comes because of an answer Palin gave during a 2008 interview with ABC News' Charlie Gibson. Gibson asked Palin, "What insight into Russian actions ... just because of the proximity of the state, give you?"

Palin responded:

"They're our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska."

Russia is visible not just from Little Diomede Island (about 2 1/2 miles from Big Diomede Island, which is in Russia); the Chukotski Peninsula is also visibile (on clear days) from the Alaska mainland (at Wales) and from St. Lawrence Island.

Am I allowed to ask questions? "It is a well known fact that those who must want to rule are those least suited to it." I know this exact quote is Douglas Adams, but I've heard people say the idea was originally Plato's. Where did this idea come from and how was it justified?

When I was a kid I played a lot of Total War games, particularly (of course) Rome Total War, and hot damn were those quotations really shitty. I knew it perfectly well at the time too, since I started my classical education pretty early (the benefit, or curse depending on how you look at it, of having a classicist for a father) but I didn't give too much of a damn because it was a fun game (although not very realistic). Most of the quotations were misattributed, poorly translated, or taken out of context. A number of "quotations" that they couldn't find sources for or outright made up were labelled as "Latin Proverb." Poor Plato in particular stands out in my memory for some reason as having been totally butchered. Most notable is the misattribution of the quotation, "only the dead have seen the end of war" to Plato, when in fact it first appears in George Santayana's work and is first attributed to Plato by General MacArthur during his speech at West Point in 1962--why MacArthur thought it was Plato I have no idea. Additionally, the developers of the game took another of Plato's quotations, which they render as "Every care must be taken that our auxiliaries, being stronger than our citizens, may not grow too much for them and become savage beasts" totally out of context. First of all, that's an antiquated and really shitty translation, and second of all it misses the point completely. If you don't know who the auxiliaries are (in Plato's ideal society they are one of the classes of citizens, making up the soldiers) it doesn't make sense, and even then you have an idea it doesn't make too much sense unless you know that Plato in the conversation from which this passage is lifted is saying that unless the state makes sure its soldiers are not given too much freedom they will overpower the people and tyrannize them. Otherwise it's just a cool-sounding quotation

Moving on to more Roman matters, misquotations that are more up my alley. A fair amount of people are aware by now that Caesar almost certainly did not say "Et tu Brute"--if he was able to get anything but a gurgle out while having his chest pierced by 23 dagger wounds it was the Greek "kai su teknon," and you child (and we'll leave aside the ambiguity that results from that, since in Greek frequently when you don't know whose child it is it's assumed to be your child). I want to look at Caesar's famous quotation "alea iacta est." Did Caesar say it? He said something like that, our sources are certain of that. But they disagree on precisely what was said. Suetonius, writing in Latin, reports that Caesar said "iacta alea est," whereas Plutarch, writing in Greek, reports that Caesar actually quoted the line from Menander from which he was getting his exclamation from: "Ἀνερρίφθω κύβος." Both mean more or less the same thing (with some nuances--the Greek is an imperative whereas the Latin is a statement, and some scholars propose that "est" should be replaced with the rare imperative form "esto"), but the question is, did Caesar say it in Greek or in Latin? We don't know, and the problem is caused by the fact that our two main sources are using different languages. Plutarch always translates Latin into Greek and Suetonius usually translates Greek into Latin, so if it was said in the language that they are not writing in we would only know if they gave some indication of that, which they don't. So which was it? Who the hell knows--Gelzer, if I remember right, argues that Plutarch is right, but Caesar may just as well have said it in both languages, quoting the line and then explaining it for anyone around who didn't know Greek well enough. Luckily it doesn't really matter much...

Go tell the Spartans, stranger, that here
we lie, in obedience to their decrees.

-- not Simonides. Anonymous. Misattributed to Simonides in the Palatine Anthology; but Herodotos knew this couplet, he knew his Simonides, and he knew Simonides wasn't the author, and he's just a teeny bit stronger as a witness than an anthology that didn't begin to be compiled until 400 years later.

Whom gods would destroy, they first send mad.

-- not Euripides. Actually Longfellow; he did get the idea from ancient sources, though, probably Publilius Syrus; a less concise form appears in the Sophokles scholia, unattributed, but that's hardly likely to be the basis for Longfellow's version.

The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.

-- not Sokrates. Earliest source seems to be an article that appeared in two health magazines in 1922 ([1], [2]). And no, it doesn't come from Aristophanes' Clouds either, though at least in that one there are a few elements in common.

deus ex machina

-- not an ancient term for a theatrical prop or plot device -- though the Greek equivalent, theos apo tēs mechanēs, was. The Latin phrase didn't appear until 1624, in a commentary on Aristotle's Poetics by Paulus Benius Eugubinus.

Readers interested in this topic might enjoy a delightful book: The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes, which examines hundreds of popular misquotations. Fun book!

Some of the historical ones he discusses are:

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." --attributed by John F. Kennedy to Edmund Burke, when it appears Burke said no such thing

"Nice guys finish last" -- never said by Leo Durocher

"America is great because America is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." --never written by Alexis de Toqueville

"An army travels on its stomach" -- not coined by Napoleon, as popularly credited. Possibly coined by Frederick the Great in a modified form; possibly older

"Your people, sir, is a great beast" -- attributed wrongly to Alexander Hamilton, this first appeared in a biography of dubious reputation written 55 years after his death

Source: Keyes, Ralph. The Quote Verifier New York: St. Martin's Griffin, 2010.

Stretching the topic here a tad to include the written word, the Jacobite "no quarter" orders at Culloden are now considered a forgery. What's so important about this, you may wonder? Well, "no quarter" (i.e. no mercy to any perceived as an enemy combattant) orders were pretty much unheard of at this time and for the Jacobite leaders (usually it's pegged to Lord George Murray) to issue such an order essentially confirms that they were indeed the barbarians they were perceived as. Even more significantly, Prince William, the Duke of Cumberland, used the existence of this order (remember, now considered a forgery) to justify no quarter orders of his own.

The aftermath of Culloden was brutal. Anyone suspected of being a Jacobite or harbouring a Jacobite was killed. I've written about this before, but some examples include killing injured survivors where they were found, denying medical treatment for prisoners, and demanding the people in a particular house surrender, shooting those who did and burning alive those who did not. I could go on, but it's fairly easy to find this stuff online and I don't particularly enjoy recounting it. And remember, all of this justified because of a fake quote.

Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.

-- not Winston Churchill

Detailed info: http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/09/03/success-final/

This quote attribution always bothers me when I'm in a particularly anti-Churchillian mood, and I see it frequently because my girlfriend is a big fan. It's a good message though, people should keep printing it.

So many -- you could write a book about just those misattributed to Churchill:

“If I Were Your Wife I’d Put Poison in Your Tea!” “If I Were Your Husband I’d Drink It”

If You Are Not a Liberal at 25, You Have No Heart. If You Are Not a Conservative at 35 You Have No Brain

Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives

This Is the Sort of Nonsense Up With Which I Will Not Put

"Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes" - June 17, 1775

Usually attributed to Israel Putnam of the Continental Army (Or I guess the Massachusetts Militia as in June of 1775 they were not adopted by the Congress yet). Also given to many other officers.

Although we are sure orders to not fire until the British were close, no historical proof that it was said in this manner.

I just mentioned two in another post. This is the one I see most.

"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -Woodrow Wilson, after signing the Federal Reserve into existence

I constantly see the "End The Fed/the Fed killed JFK!" crowd using this. No source has ever been found for where it was said or wrote, and Wilson was in fact proud of the creation of the federal reserve, and never changed that opinion.

Thomas Jefferson is another president which has a boatload of fake quotes attributed to him, which are fashionable among the same crowd.

"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered...I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs." -Thomas Jefferson

No known record of this quote exists until way after a century from Jefferson's death.

I'll take the opportunity to ask a question: many biographies of Washington, and ample other secondary sources on the Revolution, relate an incident in which King George III praised Washington for resigning his commission at the end of the war. The King is said to have exclaimed:

If he does that, he will be the greatest man in the world.

The quote is related as fact by Chernow, for example, in his biography of Washington. But I tried to chase the source of the quote from Chernow's footnotes, and couldn't come up with anything beyond secondary sources. Others have tried, including a Revolutionary History flaired user, with no success!

Is there any credible primary source for this saying? Or is it another one of the many apocryphal Washington stories that sprung up around him?

What do you guys think of the first words spoken on the moon: "This is one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind." - Neal Armstrong

He says he said the "a" but because of mic-tech issues, this contextually important word was unheard.

So, I ask, is the common/slightly/historic misunderstood usage a misquote?

EDIT: missing comma

"Being born in a stable does not make a man a horse," often attributed to Arthur Wellesley and given some framing like 'when asked about his Irish heritage' or similar bollocks. A similar phrase was actually uttered by an Irish Catholic politician called Daniel O'Connell during a speech, dismissing claims someone else must have made that the Iron Duke was an Irishman himself. It should be noted that O'Connell and his fellows had a very narrow idea of what constituted "Irish", and even though Wellesley was a lifelong proponent of Catholic emancipation, was born in and spent a great deal of time in Ireland and spoke the Irish language, the fact that he was a Protestant serving in the British Army who had benefitted from the Ascendancy stripped him of that status.

There's a bit on the Wikipedia page that claims "During his life he had openly disliked being referred to as an "Irishman" ", allegedly a quote from Elizabeth Longford's book The Years of the Sword, which is an old favorite of mine. I have it in front of me right now, as a matter of fact. I've been scouring it for over an hour and I can't find any such thing in it. Looking up the wiki talk page's archives reveals a rather violent edit war that took place a while back, wherein it was variously claimed Wellington was unequivocally Irish, unequivocally British, or a mixture of the two, and nary a source was cited. In an attempt to keep the peace someone seems to have paraphrased arguments from both sides and ascribed them to Longford, God rest her soul.

For her part, Longford bought into the misattribution as well. She was a British aristocrat writing in the 1960s and in my opinion not much of an academic author, so we'll let it slide.

Thomas Jefferson never said "that government is best which governs least." In his work The Jefferson Image in the American Mind, Merrill D. Peterson addresses this quote, saying it could be described as a Jeffersonian maxim, but he never said or wrote those words themselves.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - NOT Voltaire.

It is a phrase which Evelyn Beatrice Hall used in her book, The Friends of Voltaire (1906), where she illustrates Voltaire´s beliefs.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

—Margaret Mead

Mead never said this, at least not in any form that can be verified—it doesn't appear in any published book, article, or letter, and even Mead's own institute, which puts the quote in its masthead, admits that it has no idea where it came from. (There's also the small point that the second half of the "quote" is demonstrably false...but that's a whole other topic of discussion.)

Anyone have any info about that quote from the Albigensian Crusade,

"Kill them all, God will recognize his own"

Einstein probably never referred to the cosmological constant as "the biggest blunder of my life." It appears those words were put into his mouth by George Gamow.

I guess not so much of a fake quote as a bad quote but I find that more often than not Archduke Franz Ferdinand's last words are given wrongly. Mostly they are quoted as "Sophie! Sophie! Don't die, live for our children!"... it's not bad per se, but it's slightly inaccurate, which is the worst kind of inaccurate.

First, because he actually called her "Sopherl", the diminutive form. And second, because that were not the Archduke's final words but merely his final words to his wife, who died (or at least lost consciousness) shortly before him.

The whole account comes from Count Franz von Harrach, chaimberlain to the Archduke and owner of the car, who on the day sat on the opposite of the royal pair on one of two extra fold-down chairs together with provincial governor Oskar Potiorek. Although following the first assassination attempt he and adjutant Gustav Schneiberg actually stood on the left-side footboard to shield the pavement side, but anyway.
After the shots fell (from the right) the Duchess fell into her husband's lap, unconscious on account of the abdominal hit which pierced her aorta. The Archduke cried his "Sophie! Sophie! Don't die, live for our children!", which she probably didn't hear anymore... but that is not the end. According to Harrach, he then asked Franz Ferdinand whether he was in pain and, clutching his neck with both pierced artery and trachea, he repeatedly mumbled "It's nothing" a few times while slowly drifting out of consciousness.

So by all accounts Franz Ferdinand's last words should rightfully be "It's nothing", which doesn't seem like bad last words at all, but I suppose the children line is much more emotional and certainly when it was read out during the trial even the otherwise stoic Princip himself showed some emotion and the presiding judge reading out the protocol was too emotionally shaken to continue and had to hand it over to another judge to finish.

General McAuliffe's response of "Nuts" at the Battle of the Bulge. True? Myth?

Not a misquote, but there are plenty of quotes that are taken out of context. A few favorites:

"Discretion is the better part of valour"--in its original context in Henry IV, Part 1, Falstaff uses this to justify his own cowardice. Now it's become proverbial.

"Carpe diem"--less bad, but definitely not taken in its original context, partially thanks to Dead Poets' Society. Originally, it meant enjoy life while you can (and while you're at it, Leuconoe, why don't you drink some more of my wine?), but now, it's taken on the meaning of, to quote Robin Williams' character, "make your lives extrordinary."

If I can think of some more, I'll add them on.

I was just wondering yesterday, did Paul Revere ever really say that the British were coming. That seems hard to imagine in that the British are more than just the English. I would imagine he might have said English or red coats or something like that. It's not like we were at war with Scotland and Ireland.

• Marie Antoinette: I was a queen, and you took away my crown. I was a wife, and you killed my husband. I was a mother, and you took my children. All I have left is my blood, hurry to spill it. (with some variations)

She's supposed to have said this at her trial, but there's no indication that she actually did.

• Robespierre: You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

Nope. It was published in a collection of revolutionary witticisms, but it wasn't quoting him.

• Madame Roland: Oh liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!

She's supposed to have said this on the scaffold, while bowing to the statue of liberty, but none of the reports from her execution mention it.

• Fouquier-Tinville: I was only following orders!

Fouquier-Tinville was the prosecutor of the Revolutionary Tribunal during the Reign of Terror. Afterwards, he was put on trial and executed, and this is said to have been his defense. I could write ten pages about how it wasn't... It mostly pops up these days to make the obvious comparison, but people, the prosecutor who took over the Tribunal for example, boiled his defense down to the same argument while the trial was going on. Why did they do that? Because it's a terrible fucking argument that would have been an open invitation to have him guillotined, since following the orders of Robespierre &co was exactly what he was accused of.

really, almost every famous quote could be put here. no one in the French Revolution said anything at all.

Zhou Enlai never meant what we think he meant when he said it's too early to tell the consequences of the French Revolution. He misunderstood the question and thought they were asking about the Cultural Revolution, which was still going on at the time.