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Dang's comment clarified my intent. I want now to address "Napoleon was oldest the attribution I could find." There are two aspects to "oldest attribution"; on

by dalke 11y ago

Dang's comment clarified my intent. I want now to address "Napoleon was oldest the attribution I could find." There are two aspects to "oldest attribution"; one is to when the attribution was made, and the other is the era that the attributed person lived. They should not be confused. If I say that Socrates said "a broken clock is right twice a day", then this is a recent attribution to someone who lived a long time ago. If others then follow my lead, then there will be a lot of modern citations to someone who lived thousands of years ago. That doesn't mean it would be correct. This means one can't simply order the list of attributed people and pick the person who lived first. That might be a false attribution. For example, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125169095 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1251690... describes some of the quotes falsely attributed to Lincoln, and http://shannonselin.com/2014/07/10-things-napoleon-never-said/ http://shannonselin.com/2014/07/10-things-napoleon-never-sai... lists quotes attributed to Napoleon, but which he either did not say or did not originate. One way to help identify misattributed quotes is to look in the historical record. Sometimes people 50 years ago quoted unknown person X as the source of a quote, where people now quote older and more famous person Y. Because of the tendency to attach quotes to a more famous person, this would suggest - though surely not prove - that the attribution to Y is incorrect. In the early 1970s you can see many people name diverse sources to the quote, including Haley, author of "Roots". As Napoleon's writing are well-known and studied, the lack of a citation during that to Napoleon is a strong indicator that he did not make the quote in any citeable fashion. (Eg, the shannonselin.com link points out Napoleon may have said 'Not tonight, Josephine'; we just don't have citeable evidence for it.)

oso2k 11y ago
> One way to help identify misattributed quotes is to look in the historical record. Sometimes people 50 years ago quoted unknown person X as the source of a quote, where people now quote older and more famous person Y. > Because of the tendency to attach quotes to a more famous person, this would suggest - though surely not prove - that the attribution to Y is incorrect. dalke, you just agreed with my original point in citing those quotes after getting tangled in the weeds of citation & attribution. History or the historical record is often inaccurate; often (re)written by those who control such things at the time of (re)writing. Though, I must say, your distrust of historical record doesn't seem to lead you to the next, and for me, more important question than accuracy of attribution & citation: Why?
- dalke 11y ago
  Your original point is completely independent of who might have said it before you did. I was therefore not making a comment about that point. Rather, I was cautioning you that in my experience your citation source is often incorrect. Your original point is also simply untrue. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is perhaps the most famous case where those defeated - the Romans - are also the ones who wrote the history. They fully acknowledged that they were thoroughly defeated. We have no German account of their victory. You seem to suggest a parallelism between my observation (that quotes are often re-attributed to a more famous name, even when there is no record of them having said it) and the meaning behind the aphorisms you repeated. I believe that is similar to Orwell's point, yes, though we do have other methods, including archaeology, to help establish the history. However, Orwell's point is more a deliberate decision, like the falsification of history practiced by the Soviet Union. Comparing that to lazy scholarship is rather trite, don't you think? I don't understand your question "Why?". Why do people prefer to cite famous people instead of leaving it "anonymous" or "unknown"? I don't know. Why do you personally want to distort history? Again, I can't answer that question. Does it make you feel like you are more of a victor? Do I get to defeat you by changing your words? My deliberately snippy remarks now are really rather trite compared to, say, moving Trotsky from Soviet photograph. I don't really think it makes sense to compare the two.

by dalke 11y ago

oso2k 11y ago

> One way to help identify misattributed quotes is to look in the historical record. Sometimes people 50 years ago quoted unknown person X as the source of a quote, where people now quote older and more famous person Y. > Because of the tendency to attach quotes to a more famous person, this would suggest - though surely not prove - that the attribution to Y is incorrect. dalke, you just agreed with my original point in citing those quotes after getting tangled in the weeds of citation & attribution. History or the historical record is often inaccurate; often (re)written by those who control such things at the time of (re)writing. Though, I must say, your distrust of historical record doesn't seem to lead you to the next, and for me, more important question than accuracy of attribution & citation: Why?

dalke 11y ago
Your original point is completely independent of who might have said it before you did. I was therefore not making a comment about that point. Rather, I was cautioning you that in my experience your citation source is often incorrect. Your original point is also simply untrue. The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest is perhaps the most famous case where those defeated - the Romans - are also the ones who wrote the history. They fully acknowledged that they were thoroughly defeated. We have no German account of their victory. You seem to suggest a parallelism between my observation (that quotes are often re-attributed to a more famous name, even when there is no record of them having said it) and the meaning behind the aphorisms you repeated. I believe that is similar to Orwell's point, yes, though we do have other methods, including archaeology, to help establish the history. However, Orwell's point is more a deliberate decision, like the falsification of history practiced by the Soviet Union. Comparing that to lazy scholarship is rather trite, don't you think? I don't understand your question "Why?". Why do people prefer to cite famous people instead of leaving it "anonymous" or "unknown"? I don't know. Why do you personally want to distort history? Again, I can't answer that question. Does it make you feel like you are more of a victor? Do I get to defeat you by changing your words? My deliberately snippy remarks now are really rather trite compared to, say, moving Trotsky from Soviet photograph. I don't really think it makes sense to compare the two.