Author Topic: Crediting a quote (Read 1113 times)

islander · « **on:** November 21, 2013, 09:18:32 AM »

hubag bohol's personal text/signature is:

"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt," which he attributes Abraham Lincoln.

in today's column of Conrado de Quiros at the Philippine Daily Inquirer (Thereâ€™s the Rub, http://opinion.inquirer.net/65771/new-normal#ixzz2lIiK6bgE), a line goes thus:

"...Tacloban of late, and youâ€™ll appreciate Mark Twainâ€™s remark that it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought of as a fool than to open it and confirm the fact."

so who really said this quotable line? curious cat cannot help but get curioser...

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islander · « **Reply #1 on:** November 21, 2013, 09:26:12 AM »

online information is truly a heap, one needs to pick through all that trash or gold mine of information, opinion, news, and whatever else. interestingly, for just the attribution of this one quote, there are mountains of such heap.

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islander · « **Reply #2 on:** November 21, 2013, 09:33:07 AM »

after all, the attribution of this quote is not limited to either Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain only. also credited or quoted with this line are a diverse lot like Oscar Wilde, Woodrow Wilson, George Eliot, Groucho Marx, Albert Einstein, and journalist Silvan Engel. whew!

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islander · « **Reply #3 on:** November 21, 2013, 09:38:56 AM »

my favorite entries on who 'owns' this quote:

1

This is a very old maxim or adage, and it is not possible to attribute it to any one individual.

Although some credit this quote to Abraham Lincoln, others to Mark Twain, and others to Samuel Johnson (apocryphally) , it evidently is much, much older than all of these, and they are probably paraphrasing from Scriptures, or repeating an old adage.

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islander · « **Reply #4 on:** November 21, 2013, 09:42:16 AM »

2

Iâ€™ve had the following quote on my blog for a while:

It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open oneâ€™s mouth and remove all doubt â€” Abraham Lincoln

It was pointed out to me that the attribution of that quote should have been to Mark Twain, not Abraham Lincoln. I started wondering if that could be true. I certainly did not want to propagate a misquote. Even after doing some searching on the web, I still was not able to determine the answer to my satisfaction. Bartleby, where I usually go to check quotes, did not have the quote at all. A number of sites attribute the quote to Lincoln, and just as many attribute the quote to Mark Twain. Still other sites attribute to someone else altogether. I was not able to find any reliable citations on any site. Even Ask Yahoo came up empty.

The quote is clearly derived from a much earlier quote found in Proverbs 17:28 in the MÃshlÃª Shlomoh in the Tanakh.

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islander · « **Reply #5 on:** November 21, 2013, 09:46:54 AM »

3

This was a tougher nut to crack than we originally thought. Not only could we not find a definite answer to your question, we couldn't even confirm the exact wording of the quote.

Searches on "better to keep your mouth closed" and "better to remain silent" (using the quotation marks in both cases) turned up numerous web pages, all offering different versions of the phrase. Some sources quoted the saying as "It's far better...", some substituted the words "stupid," "ignorant," or "simpleton" for the word "fool," and still others twisted the saying into an almost unrecognizable form.

A page titled Mark Twain and the Mutating Quote attributed at least four variations of the same phrase to the eminently quotable Twain, explaining that it was a case of "split personality" that accounted for the variations, rather than a rash of misquotes.

Other pages suggested a number of other authors for the saying, including: Abraham Lincoln, George Eliot, Groucho Marx, Albert Einstein, and a mysterious figure named Silvan Engel.

In an attempt to solve this proverbial puzzle, we paid a visit to Bartleby.com, home to the online version of Familiar Quotations. Unfortunately, after searching on a number of possible keywords and potential authors, we couldn't find a single reference to this quote.

All the confusion and disagreement surrounding both the author and the wording of this saying led us to suspect that it may be a simple maxim, not attributable to any single person -- which is not to question its wisdom.

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islander · « **Reply #6 on:** November 21, 2013, 09:52:18 AM »

4

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Apparently not Johnson, using the Primary Source Media CD-ROM as the judge. Nowhere in Johnson's works or letters, or contemporary biographies of him, do the phrases "remain silent" or "remove all doubt" appear in anything close to this context. In fact, the words "silent" and "fool" never appear together in a sentence.

In addition to Johnson, many other people are supposed to have said this. Sometimes people cite Abraham Lincoln; or a journalist named Silvan Engel or sometimes it's attributed to "Lincoln, quoting Silvan Engel." It also gets attributed to Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and Woodrow Wilson. (You can read more in this discussion in alt.quotations, as well as this explanation at "Ask Yahoo!")

Peter Lewerin has suggested Proverbs 17:28 as an early source of the line: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

http://answers.yahoo.com/

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islander · « **Reply #7 on:** November 21, 2013, 09:59:57 AM »

Peter Lewerin has suggested Proverbs 17:28 as an early source of the line: "Even a fool, when he holdeth his peace, is counted wise: and he that shutteth his lips is esteemed a man of understanding."

it then looks like the scriptures, having been there some millenia ahead of these quotable people, has won the day as the original source of the quote's wisdom.

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hubag bohol · « **Reply #8 on:** November 22, 2013, 05:58:42 AM »

Well, yes, the idea is there. But it's the formulation generally attributed to Lincoln that, to me, has the best punch.

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Author Topic: Crediting a quote (Read 1113 times)

islander

Crediting a quote

islander

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islander

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islander

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islander

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hubag bohol

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