By Bob Ewegen Ralph Keyes’s lovely little book “The Quote Verifier” attributes the famous line, “Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so small,” to political scientist Wallace Sayre. Sayre, in turn, may have been inspired by Woodrow Wilson’s observation that the intensity of the academic squabbles he witnessed while president of …
Book Buzz: Get your quota of quotes
Seattle Times By Mary Ann Gwinn, book editor Thanks to “The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where and When” by Ralph Keyes (St. Martin’s Press, $15.95), I may be as close as I’ll ever get to finding out who first uttered my all-time favorite quote, which is: “The road to hell is paved with good …
Many Famous Lines Aren't Exactly What People Said, New Book Concludes
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette By Cristina Rouvalis Say it ain’t so. A crestfallen boy didn’t tell “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.” And Mark Twain likely didn’t coin “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.” It wasn’t Vince Lombardi who first proclaimed, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” At …
Misquoting
Toronto Globe and Mail By Michael Kesterton Why is it so easy to get quotations wrong? “Our memory wants quotations to be better than they usually were, and said by the person we want to have said them,” writes Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When. A good line — …
Ask Not Where This Quote Came From
Washington Post By Ralph Keyes Political figures routinely get their quotations wrong. No modern politician has stood out quite so much in this regard as John F. Kennedy. JFK loved to pepper his speeches and public statements with quotations. This not only perked up his prose, but improved his press by giving him an air …
As Plato famously said, 'Show me the money!'
Herald-Times (Bloomington, IN) By Mike Leonard One of author Ralph Keyes’ favorite examples of the erroneous or spurious attribution of quotes is the oft-repeated line, “Show me the money!” from the movie, “Jerry Maguire.” Sports agent Drew Rosenhaus worked as a consultant for screenwriter and director Cameron Crowe and immediately took credit for the catch …