“Legends are best left as legends and attempts to make them real are rarely successful”

Before playing his last game in Parc des Princes, Paris. https://twitter.com/Ibra_official/status/731025180777172992
Attributed

As quoted in numerous reports of a response she made to a question by Jenni Falconer during joint interview sessions http://film.guardian.co.uk/venice/story/0,15051,1300356,00.html with Nicole Kidman at the Venice Film Festival (8 September 2004) She, Kidman and others have indicated that the remarks were inaccurately quoted and taken out of context. (see also the Larry King interview)

Context: Do we walk in legends or on the green earth in the daylight? A man may do both, said Aragorn. For not we but those who come after will make the legends of our time. The green earth, say you? That is a mighty matter of legend, though you tread it under the light of day!

Source: The Capture

Source: The Dervish House (2010), Ch. 3, §5 (p. 109)

Book Two, Part I “Across the Ring”, Chapter 2 (p. 151)
The Birthgrave (1975)

Source: I Am Legend (1954), Ch. 3
Context: True, he thought, but no one ever got the chance to know it. Oh, they knew it was something, but it couldn’t be that — not that. That was imagination, that was superstition, there was no such thing as that.
And, before science had caught up with the legend, the legend had swallowed science and everything.

Congressional testimony (2007)
Context: I have repeatedly said, when asked, that if the stories about me helped inspired our troops and rally a nation, then perhaps there was some good. However, I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and try to make me a legend, when the real heroics — of my fellow soldiers that day — were legendary.

Prefix to Altneuland, (1902)
Originally in German: Wenn ihr wollt, ist es kein Märchen... which was intended to have the double meaning of a strong will shall eventually be realized, and as part of a paragraph ending as a postfix to the book, that this book perhaps will be seen as a true story, but even if not...
The Israeli rightist movement "Im Tirzu" (Literally: 'If you will') is named after this quote.