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1
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
AristotlemisattributedThe Story of Philosophy, by Will Durant·1926

Wrongly attributed

This is Will Durant, not Aristotle, and Durant is not translating -- he is summarising the Nicomachean Ethics in his own words and marking the difference by dropping the quotation marks he uses on either side of it. The nearest thing in Aristotle is that virtues are formed in a man by his doing the actions, which Durant does put in quotation marks in the same sentence. The memorable half is the half Durant wrote. It usually circulates with a therefore inserted and the excellence turned into a moral instruction, neither of which is in the book.

2
Drive thy business, let not that drive thee; and early to bed, and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise, as Poor Richard says.
Benjamin FranklindisputedFranklin's Way to Wealth; or, Poor Richard Improved·1758

Attribution contested

Franklin made the proverb famous and is now given it outright, but he did not write it. It is recorded in English more than a century before he was born, in the Book of St Albans in 1496 and in John Clarke's proverb collection of 1639. Franklin's own contribution is the half nobody quotes: drive thy business, let not that drive thee.

3
God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says.
Benjamin FranklindisputedFranklin's Way to Wealth; or, Poor Richard Improved·1758

Attribution contested

Quoted constantly as scripture. It is nowhere in the Bible, which says something close to the opposite in several places. Franklin printed it in Poor Richard's Almanack and gathered it here in 1758, but he did not coin it either: he presents it as an existing proverb, and versions of it appear in Algernon Sidney's Discourses in 1698 and, earlier still, in Aesop.

6
I learned that assistance given to the weak makes the one who gives it strong; and that oppression of the unfortunate makes one weak.
Booker T. WashingtondisputedUp from Slavery·1901

Attribution contested

Circulated everywhere as if you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else, which appears in none of Washington's books, addresses or letters. This is the sentence in Up from Slavery it compresses. The paraphrase is not unfair, but it is not a quotation, and it drops the second half -- the claim that oppressing the unfortunate makes the oppressor weak -- which is the part he was actually arguing.

7
out of the hard and unusual struggle through which he is compelled to pass, he gets a strength, a confidence, that one misses whose pathway is comparatively smooth
Booker T. WashingtonverifiedUp from Slavery·1901
10
I want you to make up your minds that you are going to be more nearly perfect, are going to put more manly and womanly strength into the preparation of your lessons each day, that you may be more useful.
Booker T. WashingtonverifiedGrowth, in Character Building·1902
20
Our attempts should be not to extinguish nature, but to repress it; not to stand unmoved at distress, but endeavour to turn every disaster to our own advantage. Our greatest glory is, not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
ConfuciusmisattributedLetter VII, in The Citizen of the World, by Oliver Goldsmith·1762

Wrongly attributed

The single most-shared sentence ever credited to Confucius, and it is an Irish novelist's. Goldsmith wrote it for the Public Ledger in 1760 and collected it in 1762, in a series of letters supposedly by a Chinese visitor. Letter VII opens with a headnote in Goldsmith's own hand: the Editor thinks proper to acquaint the reader that the greatest part of the following letter seems to him to be little more than a rhapsody of sentences borrowed from Confucius, the Chinese philosopher. Two paragraphs later the narrator says he holds the volume of Confucius in his hand. That framing is precisely how the line became Confucius's, and later Mandela's. Note also the comma after glory, which the popular version drops, and that Goldsmith wrote the same sentence again in Letter XXII with a different opening.

21
the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step
ConfuciusmisattributedThe Tao Teh King, or the Tao and its Characteristics (trans. James Legge)·1891

Wrongly attributed

Not Confucius. The line is from the Tao Teh King, a different book by a different school, traditionally ascribed to Laozi -- a figure whose very existence historians doubt. Two things drift in the popular version: li becomes miles, and commenced becomes begins with. Legge's 1891 translation, the standard English text for a century, says neither.