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You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time

Abraham Lincolndisputed·Lincoln's Yarns and Stories, ed. Alexander K. McClure·1901

Attribution contested

No contemporaneous record of Lincoln saying this survives. It first appears in recollections published decades after his death, and has also been credited to P. T. Barnum. Even the wording is unstable: this is McClure's 1901 text, which differs from the version usually quoted today. Treat the phrasing as the compiler's, not Lincoln's.

God helps them that help themselves, as Poor Richard says.

Benjamin Franklindisputed·Franklin'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.

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 Franklindisputed·Franklin'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.

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. Washingtondisputed·Up 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.

It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.

Epictetusdisputed·The Encheiridion, in A Selection from the Discourses of Epictetus (trans. George Long)·1888

Attribution contested

The fifth maxim is the source of the modern slogan it is not what happens to you but how you react to it, which translates nothing Epictetus wrote and has no attested author. The paraphrase stops halfway. Epictetus opens by saying men are disturbed by their opinions about things rather than by the things, but he ends here -- taking the blame yourself is only the middle stage, and the finished man blames nobody at all.

the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart

Helen Kellerdisputed·Letter to the Rev. Phillips Brooks, in The Story of My Life·June 8, 1891

Attribution contested

The words are Keller's, but two things in the popular version are not. The wording is smoothed -- it usually appears as they must be felt with the heart -- and, more importantly, Keller does not present the thought as her own: she writes that her teacher explained it to her. On her own account the sentence belongs at least as much to Anne Sullivan.

each rational being can make every impediment in his way a proper matter for himself to act upon, and can use it for his guiding purpose, whatever it may be

Marcus Aureliusdisputed·The Meditations of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (trans. George W. Chrystal)·1902

Attribution contested

This is the passage behind the slogan the obstacle is the way, which Marcus never wrote. That phrase is the title of a 2014 book, and the sentence usually quoted with it -- the impediment to action advances action, what stands in the way becomes the way -- is Gregory Hays's 2002 translation, still in copyright. The thought is genuinely his; the memorable English is not.

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won't work.

Thomas A. Edisondisputed·Edison: His Life and Inventions, by Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin·1910

Attribution contested

The famous form -- I have not failed, I have just found ten thousand ways that won't work -- has no source in Edison. The earliest record of the remark is this one, in the authorised 1910 biography, and it is a colleague's recollection of a conversation, not Edison writing. Note what changes in the retelling: several thousand becomes ten thousand, and a man cheerfully counting negative results becomes a man defending himself against failure.

The good plan itself, this comes not of its own accord; it is the fruit of “genius” (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all)

Thomas Carlyledisputed·History of Friedrich II of Prussia, Volume 4·1858

Attribution contested

Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains is one of the most quoted sentences in English and Carlyle did not write it. This is what he wrote, and the differences are real: transcendent, not infinite; trouble, not pains; and first of all, which concedes that taking trouble is only where genius starts. The familiar wording appears later in the century in other hands and is usually traced to Jane Ellice Hopkins in 1870. Carlyle got the credit because he got there first with the thought.