Famous Misquotes

Winston Churchill may have collected even more misattributions than Einstein.

"Up with which we will not put." - WC.

http://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotations/135-quotes-falsely-attributed

The first one's a favorite...

"Houston, we have a problem," was first uttered by Swigert, not Lovell.

Actually it was "Houston, we've had a problem."

And if Armstrong ever said that quote today, he'd be sent to a NASA diversity re-education camp. Seriously.

http://odeo.hq.nasa.gov/

http://odeo.hq.nasa.gov/documents/order_13160.pdf

http://odeo.hq.nasa.gov/documents/D-I_Framework_Guide_11-30-10.pdf?Internal_ID=N_PR_3713_0003_&page_name=AppendixD

...and so much more...

jhammond

The most famous mosquitoes I can think of are Aedes and Anopheles.

The known Moore's Law was a misquote by the interviewer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colemanballs

Almost an anagram of mosquito - but not quite.

Wasn't W blamed for a lot of misquotes.

Fool me once, shame on you; Fool me twice ... We won't get fooled again.

If we don't succeed then we risk failure.

Most of our imports come from outside our country.

Pollution doesn't harm the environment, it's the impurities in our air and water.

The Iraqis want us to leave ... I think it's better for us if we did leave.

Or In my line of work, I have to keep saying things over and over and over again for the propaganda to sink in.

Sorry, but I like W. Even though he had some real zingers, I thought he was a good guy in a tough spot.

"Wasn't W blamed for a lot of misquotes."

Unfortunately, those weren't 'misquotes,' where what he said was misheard, misunderstood, or misunderestimated; those were almost all Yogiisms, where he said something completely stupid, or misspoke, and people have quoted him accurately.

"Sorry, but I like W. Even though he had some real zingers, I thought he was a good guy in a tough spot."

We weren't getting so many rapid-fire 'zingers' from other Presidents. It might have been that wasn't really ready do be in such a tough spot at that time. Think of the terrible times he was elected into: We hadn't started a new war for the past eight years, The federal economy was so screwed up that we had a budget SURPLUS, and the previous president had been impeached for screwing around with a chubby White House intern; impeached, but with no penalties attached to the impeachment: "Mr. President, consider yourself impeached, now let us all go back to work as if this trial never happened."

Dubya seems like a likable sort of guy, I wouldn't mind sitting on a porch with him sharing stories of our times in the military, but he just didn't seem to be the guy we needed at the helm back in '01-'09.

I was joking about them being misquotes - I know that he actually said those things.

Coming into office, he had the .com bubble to deal with. Many, many Americans lost a fortune in the market - things that they shouldn't have been investing in, but isn't that what usually happens?

Next, he gets hit with 9/11. Worst thing to happen on our own soil! Gotta go to war and stop terrorists from ever doing this to us again.

Finally, we let the cost of the war get the best of us. We're still paying for it today and we will for a long time.

I believe that he was the right guy for our country at the time. I don't blame him for the banking crisis. I don't think the office has as much power as we think it does. I also believe that the people he owed favors to are the ones who really took advantage of us. Those are the guys that lined their pockets at the expense of the middle class.

"I don't blame him for the banking crisis. I don't think the office has as much power as we think it does."

Yeah, if the office had the power we all act like it does, Obama would have closed Gitmo in his first week, and in the second week signed everyone up for Medicare with the one percenters footing the bill.

The POTUS is a lot like New Jersey, it just attracts pot-shots, even when you're an ex-POTUS.

Heck, Even Obama's screwed things up, he cut back on NASA's space exploration budget, and redirected them to focus on Global Warming. We already HAVE agencies focusing on Global Warming, NASA's job in that was getting the satellites up and keeping them running, not pouring over the data themselves. Now we have no shuttle program, no viable replacement for the shuttle, and our Saturn rocket technology is so old and out of date we can't make the parts anymore; we're stuck hitching a ride on the Russian rockets to get up to the ISS. The USA practically 'owned' space, now it's like we're 'subleasing' it.

I think the last time the office had that much power was with Reagan. He got the hostages out on the day he took office - huge statement. I believe he got some people really upset and his assassination attempt was a warning to pull back, which he did.

Since then, the office has had less and less power. I think the Iran-Contra scandal took a lot of power away from the President.

"I think the Iran-Contra scandal took a lot of power away from the President."

Yeah, doing an end-run around congress like that (selling weapons to a foreign power without Congress's approval, and using the money to fund a foreign band of 'freedom fighters/terrorists⁽¹⁾', also without Congress's approval, and after Congress explicitly voted down a bill to find those 'freedom fighters/terrorists,' and THEN destroying the incriminating evidence rather than honor a legally served subpoena to hand the paperwork over) kind of sours the relationship. I'm still trying to figure out how Ronnie, Ollie North, and Dee Hall managed to avoid being tried for High Treason for their actions.

Notes:

1. Remember, the terms are all a matter of perspective. If you dislike the establishment, the opposition fighters are the 'noble warriors,' if you like the establishment, the opposition fighters are the 'evil terrorists.' If you look at the battles in history, most do not have an actual 'good guy' and 'bad guy,' most of the battles in history have really been about land ("I want more land, to I'll claim my neighbor has done something horrible to my people on the border and use that as an excuse to invade.") or cultural dissagreements. ("They said their god is the only god, and ours is fake. Our culture says our god is the only god and theirs is fake. We need to teach them the truth, by killing the men, raping and enslaving the women, and taking their land, because they've got some really nice land over there.⁽²⁾")
2. Even when the war isn't about land (or resources, or 'wealth'), it's still somewhat about land. Even the American Revolution was about land. The colonists were singing "this land is OUR land," King George was saying, "no, that land is MY land." And considering that in the decades that followed, the young USA ended up in conflicts with almost every nation that had aided the colonists during the Revolution, we can see that the motivation to help the colonists was "If we get England out of the picture, it'll make it easier for me to get some of that land for myself; the 'Americans' won't have the resources of the British crown to fight us with."
   

Ouch!

Yeah, what was it Frank Drebbin once said? "The truth hurts, not as much as jumping on a bicycle with the seat missing, but it hurts."

(How Leslie Nielsen was able to give that line with a straight face, and without flinching himself, I'll never know. That man is/was a true, high-caliber Actor.)

I used to work with a guy named Victor who said often, "if the truth hurts, maybe it should".

Never met Victor, but I think I'd like him. Painful/uncomfortable truths are there to tell us, "Hey, you know that thing you're doing? STOP DOING IT!" Too many people on this planet try to ignore that message, and that's when we end up in REAL trouble.

If we could just get everyone to agree on one thing, even something trivial, like 'when the new year begins,' or 'what units will we use to measure length,' then we might have a chance to say, "Okay, we all now have at least one thing in common, think we can sit down and talk peaceably to find a second?" It might be too much to ask, but it we can get agreements on the little things, we can use that to find common ground on the larger things, until we can collectively tackle the 'painful truths' and do something productive about them.

"Play it again, Sam." Boggie never said it.

I wish Armstrong had said "Why, it's not green cheese!"

Very true! Bogie never said it, Ilsa never said it. No one says it in the whole movie. Weird. One of my favorite movies.

Classic Yogi Berra: "I never really said all those things I said."