kimberly7
@kimberly7, member from March 9, 2022
“You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”
Misquoted in Forbes (6 October 1986), actually attributed to humorist Professor Irwin Corey (1953) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/11/03/kind-gun/
Disputed
Variant: You can get more with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
Often attributed to Churchill, this thought was originally expressed by the French author Victor Hugo in Villemain (1845), as follows: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo’s Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death.
Misattributed
“There is no freedom without justice.”
Although this maxim is associated with Wiesenthal (e.g. "Honoring Simon Wiesenthal", Congressional Record—House, Vol. 151, Pt. 15, 21 September 2005, p. 20804), he did not originate the quote, which appears in the context of the labor movement in the 19th century (e.g. Alexander Spencer, "Maintain Your Union", The Typographical Journal, Vol. 10, No. 7, 1 April 1897, p. 266).
Misattributed
“The best curve on a woman's body is her smile. ”
“Things will be OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end.”
“The people who were trying to make this world worse are not taking the day off. Why should I?”
Response, after being asked why he went ahead and performed in the concert "Smile Jamaica", two days after he, his wife and manager were wounded inside his home after an assault by unknown gunmen, thought to be politically motivated (5 December 1976), as quoted in Bob Marley The Father of Music (2010) by Jean-Pierre Hombasch, p. 5
Variant: The people that are trying to make the world worse never take a day off, why should I?
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.”
Preface (December 1960) to The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (1961), p. xix
Source: You Learn by Living (1960), p. 29–30
Context: You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, "I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
“Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. ”
“What would men be without women? Scarce, sir… mighty scarce.”
Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011
“Life would be tragic if it weren't funny.”
As quoted in "The Science of Second-Guessing", The New York Times (12 December 2004)