Contents

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

1. Why We Misquote

2. The Rules of Misquotation

3. Spurious Sayings

• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Elbert Hubbard
• Carl Sandburg
• The Sixties and Seventies
• The Eighties

4. Let Them Eat Brioche

• From Corsica to Waterloo
• The Killing Fields of Waterloo
• Blood and Iron
• Dizzy
• Clemenceau
• Churchill

5. Founding False Phrases

• A Brand-New Country
• The War Between the Statements
• Word Wars
• Post-Wars

6. All Politics is Vocal

• The Misquote Tradition in Politics
• May We Quote You?
• Aides

7. All the President's Misquotes

• Thomas Jefferson
• Andrew Jackson
• Abraham Lincoln
• Theodore Roosevelt
• Calvin Coolidge
• Herbert Hoover
• Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Ronald Reagan
• George Bush

8. The Twain Syndrome

• Wilson Mizner
• Alexander Woollcott
• Dorothy Parker
• Will Rogers
• Groucho Marx

9. Say it Again, Sam

• Cinema
• Mis-Remembered Lines
• Borrowed Lines
• Signature Lines

10. Say it Ain't So!

• Boxing
• Baseball
• Football

11. The Literary Lift

• Oscar Wilde
• George Bernard Shaw
• Book Titles

12. Misquote U.

• Psychology
• Natural Sciences
• Political Science
• Fine Arts
• Creative Writing
• Economics
• Marxist Studies
• Theology
• Gender Studies

13. Could You Look it Up?

• Bibliography and Notes

Index