“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”
“Every crowd has a silver lining.”
The first appearance of this quote in print was in the July 1908 issue http://books.google.com/books?id=3StKAQAAMAAJ&q=%22Every+crowd+has+a+silver+lining%22&pg=PA423#v=onepage of the journal Profitable Advertising under the heading "Modernized Maxims." It next appeared in the June 1911 issue http://books.google.com/books?id=iKZHAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Every+crowd+has+a+silver+lining%22&pg=PA32#v=onepage of The Philistine where Elbert Hubbard labeled it: "motto for a hotel-keeper." In the 1920s http://books.google.com/books?id=FBrnAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Every+crowd+has+a+silver+lining%22&pg=PA2#v=onepage, it was published with the label: "Pickpocket's motto." The attribution to P.T. Barnum didn't appear in print until a 1934 article http://books.google.com/books?id=HSIYAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Every+crowd+has+a+silver+lining%22&pg=PA14#v=onepage in Reader's Digest.
Misattributed
“To every rule there is an exception—and an idiot ready to demonstrate it. Don't be the one!”
Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
“One idiot is one idiot. Two idiots are two idiots. Ten thousand idiots are a political party.”
Was written in a slightly different way by Leo Longanesi in Italian, above form has been attributed to Kafka without evidence.
Misattributed
Source: One Idiot Is One Idiot. Two Idiots Are Two Idiots. Ten Thousand Idiots Are a Political Party, Quote Investigator, 2021-10-08 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2021/10/08/idiots/,
“If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing it.”
Edmund Burke, as quoted in Lacon in Council (1865) by John Frederick Boyes, p. 124
Misattributed
Tenía capacidad para sorprender, como todos los imbéciles mayúsculos, y por supuesto para irritar de nuevo en un solo segundo.
Source: Tu rostro mañana, 2. Baile y sueño [Your Face Tomorrow, Vol. 2: Dance and Dream] (2004), p. 213
“I know, I'm an idiot!" Leo moaned. "A brilliant idiot, but still an idiot.”
Source: The Demigod Diaries
