If you have Ralph Keyes’s book “Nice Guys Finish Seventh,” he has a great chapter on “The Rules of Misquotation that interpret the whole phenomenon of misquotations and misattributions very nicely. This book is a must read for us quoteaholics.
Read MoreSee Bartlett’s Quotations … or, better still, Ralph Keyes, “Nice Guys Finish Seventh.”
Read MoreI particularly like “Nice Guys Finish Seventh” by Ralph Keyes …
Read MoreAn amusing popular book about misattributed quotations is “Nice Guys Finish Seventh” by Ralph Keyes, which is chock full of meticulous information on dozens of spurious quotations, many of which I used to quote confidently.
Read MoreI found my reference: a marvelous little book by Ralph Keyes titled “Nice Guys Finish Seventh”.
Read MoreA definitive answer arose in the wonderful book “Nice Guys Finish Seventh”: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations.
Read MoreThe only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” If you want to find out how some of us have broken our heads to find the coiner of that, get “Nice Guys Finish Seventh”: False Phrases, Spurious Sayings, and Familiar Misquotations by Ralph Keyes.
William Safire
Read MoreOften pithy sayings we’ve always attributed to various famous figures, such as Winston Churchill, didn’t really come from their mouths. Ralph Keyes calls this “the flypaper effect.”
Robert Siegel
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