A misreporting of an actual quote praising the trustworthiness of a colleague: "His verbal contract is worth more than the paper it's written on". The identity of the colleague is variously reported as Joseph M. Schenk in Paul F. Boller, John George, They Never Said It (1990), p. 42, or as Joseph L. Mankiewicz in Carol Easton, The Search for Sam Goldwyn (1976). Goldwyn himself was reportedly aware of - and pleased by - the misattribution.
Misattributed
Revolution by Number
“An ounce of algebra is worth a ton of verbal argument.”
As quoted in his obituary by Maynard Smith http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/maynardsmith/pdf/1965.pdf in Nature 206 (1965), p. 239
Source: A Time of Changes (1971), Chapter 27 (p. 89)
“It isn't worth it. No money is worth this… [walks out].”
The Findus Foods "Frozen Peas" Session Out-Takes
“Standards are paper. I use paper to wipe my butt every day. That's how much that paper is worth.”
Discussing a "fix" in the memcpy() that broke flash, 2010-11-30, Bugzilla, Red Hat, Torvalds, Linus https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=638477#c129,
2010s, 2010
“if a book isn't self-explanatory, then it isn't worth reading.”
Source: The Zahir
“Strong words outlast the paper they are written upon.”
Source: Code Talker: A Novel About the Navajo Marines of World War Two
“Constitutions have to be written on hearts, not just paper.”
Source: Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World, p. 256
