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Who is credited for saying "You are what you eat?" Karl Marx? According to this amusing A-to-Z compendium of famous sayings, it was actually philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach who in 1850 said "Man is what he eats," but it was French politician Anthelme Brillat-Savarin who a whole quarter century earlier wrote "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." It is morsels of information like this that make up this inexpensive ready-reference source. Keyes (The Post-Truth Era) aims not only to set the record straight about who said what and when but to tell the story of how each quote was conceived and evolved over time.  Mirela Roncevic

Dallas Morning News

Who said that?

Jerome Weeks

We know Humphrey Bogart never said, "Play it again, Sam." But neither did Josef Stalin ever make such cynical observations as "A single death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic" and "No man, no problem." In his ingenious new book, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where and When, Ralph Keyes doesn't provide just the origins of several hundred well-known lines but their history - who altered or improved them, why someone else got credit.

Misquoter in chief

John F. Kennedy quoted more people than any other modern president and misquoted them, too, says Mr. Keyes, and thus led future reference works astray. Kennedy cited Edmund Burke for the famous observation, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." But no one has ever located it in Burke's writings.

Man talk

"A man's got to do what a man's got to do." Which ought to include getting his attributions straight. That manly piece of circular reasoning is often credited to John Wayne in Stagecoach. Nope. Try The Grapes of Wrath and not the movie version, either, says The Quote Verifier. But the odds are it was already a longtime catchphrase when novelist John Steinbeck got ahold of it.

Universal Press Syndicate

 AS YOGI BERRA NEVER SAID

 James Kilpatrick

 In 1953 the New York Yankees won their fifth World Series in a row. Their popular catcher, Yogi Berra, took it in stride. "It's deja vu all over again," he said.

The trouble is, he never said it. It's also probable that he never said of a particular restaurant, "It's so crowded nobody goes there any more." And if Berra was the first to remark that "the future ain't what it used to be," the evidence is hard to come by. More to the point, Berra is among hundreds of well-known figures who now stand exposed for never having said the snappy things they are said to have said.

For this exercise in debunkery let us applaud word maven Ralph Keyes. His delightful compendium of dubious quotations, "The Quote Verifier," was just published by St. Martin's Griffin. No one who writes or speaks for a living should be without it.

As a sometime member of that tribe, I willingly confess our debt to the apt quotation. Nothing serves the role of parsley on our platters quite so well as an attributed piece of penetrating wit. And if Emerson never said it or Oscar Wilde never wrote it -- well, they might have said it, or said the same thing differently. Thus misquotations spread their crabgrass roots, and we show-off scribes tend to write, as this one recently wrote, that Mies van der Rohe said that in architecture "less is more." Yes, he said it, but as Keyes reminds us, Robert Browning said it first.

When it comes to quotations, writers are served poorly by their memories. Often we gild our quotable lilies. Keyes calls it "bumper-stickering," a process in which "misremembered quotations often improve upon real ones." We quote Winston Churchill's warning of "blood, sweat and tears." He actually spoke of "blood, toil, tears and sweat," which lacked the prime minister's usual sense of sis-boom-bah. In the same fashion, sportswriters long ago tarted up Leo Durocher's famous comment on baseball's losers. What Durocher actually said was, "The nice guys are all over there, in seventh place." His words of wisdom returned from the rewrite laundry as "Nice guys finish last."

Famous quotations are not only misquoted, they also are often misattributed. It is a kind of social climbing by allusion. A funny malaprop is lots funnier if Samuel Goldwyn or Dorothy Parker or Oscar Wilde said it first. (Wilde often really did say it first.) Keyes calls a roll of celebrities who have inherited part of their reputations by osmosis: Shakespeare, Voltaire, Pope, Disraeli, Lincoln, Twain, Shaw, and especially Emerson and Franklin.

It appears that Franklin seldom met a good line that he couldn't cheerfully steal. Thus he put in the mouth of "Poor Richard" a few plums of somebody else's wisdom, e.g., "There are no gains without pains" and "Early to bed and early to rise make a man healthy, wealthy and wise." The aphorisms were at least a century old before larcenous Ben latched on to them.

Such misappropriation works best, says Keyes, "if the person quoted is not around to correct the record." Thomas Jefferson constantly is credited with things he never said -- such as remarking upon a society that "pays plumbers more than teachers." There were no "plumbers," as such, in Jefferson's time.

Who said, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"? Who knows? It's a great line, often attributed to Edmund Burke, but no scholar yet has found it in anything Burke ever wrote. It has to be credited to that famous master of the cryptic phrase, Alfred Nonymous.

Oh, and by the way, those lilies in Act IV of "King John" weren't gilded. It was gold that Shakespeare gilded. The lilies were painted. You could look it up.

Knoxville News Sentinel   

Hunter: Mark Twain Didn’t Say That? Just Where Did All Those Spicy Quotes Come From?

David Hunter

A free book landed in my post office box last week. Sending free books to people who might mention them in print is an accepted form of bribery in the world of literature and journalism. Technically, it's corruption, but there's no obligation on the part of the recipient to mention a book, and the publishers view it as a profitable practice or they wouldn't do it.

You would be surprised how many books find their way to me out here to the backwaters of Knox County in the Powell community. In this particular case, the book deals with a subject I've addressed on more than one occasion in my weekly column. Apparently I ended up on somebody's mailing list because nothing on the Internet ever goes away. The World Wide Web has become a sort of collective memory for the human race.

The title of the book is "The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where and When." It's from St. Martin's imprint, a Griffin trade paperback original. The author, Ralph Keyes, previously wrote a similar book called "Nice Guys Finish Seventh," which I also own and have mentioned before. Quotation sleuths create valuable tools for writers. It's difficult to verify a quote, even with the Internet at our disposal, and Keyes has done a superb job of researching the subject.

Almost always, when I open a book like this one, I find out that I have been guilty of attributing sayings to the wrong people. For instance, I have attributed the following quote to Mark Twain on more than one occasion because I found him listed as the original source: "A fanatic is always the fellow that is on the other side." I was surprised to find that it came from Will Rogers. On the other hand, I've attributed this one to Rogers, "Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example," when Twain really said it.

Ronald Reagan is often attributed with having first said - because he used it without a source - "If not us, who? If not now, when?" Keyes dug out the following quote from Hillel the Elder, a Jewish leader who lived in the first century: "If I am not for myself, who is for me? And when I am for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" It could be a coincidence, but more likely Reagan's speech writers didn't know the source.

"If you love something set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn't, it never was." This quote became a veritable anthem of the 1960s and 1970s, appearing on everything from posters to key chains. Despite numerous theories, Keyes eventually listed the source of the quotation as, "Yet to be determined." I once saw a T-shirt for sale in a cop magazine that said: "If you love something set it free. If it comes back, it's yours. If it doesn't, you can always hunt it down and shoot it."

Richard Burton once referred to his wife, Elizabeth Taylor, as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." This, no doubt, set some hearts fluttering at Burton's poetic side. However, it's more likely that the actor was listening to the radio in 1939 after Russia invaded Poland, and Winston Churchill said: "I cannot forecast to you the action of the Russians. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interests."

I was disappointed to find that Keyes has debunked a couple of my favorite George Bernard Shaw quotes: "It is very easy to give up smoking. I have done it hundreds of times." I will especially miss, "Experience is the name we give our mistakes." On the bright side, Shaw did say, after being told by a heckler that one of his plays was rotten: "You and I know that, but who are we among so many?"

"The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where and When" will cost you $15.95 - unless you can find a deal on the Internet or talk the publisher into giving you a free copy. If I didn't already have a copy, I'd pay that much. It's a bargain for anyone who loves to spice up his or her original words with a little outside genius.

Ventura County Star  [CA] 

Did They Say What They Say They Said?

Chuck Thomas

In a crossword puzzle this week in The Star, the theme was famous sayings that never got said. All three quotations in the puzzle are also on the cover of Ralph Keyes' fascinating new book, "The Quote Verifier."

Keyes sets out to track down 460 famous sayings — researching not just who is famous for the line, but who actually said it, as well as when and where, if anyone said it at all. He finds many famous quotes are either borrowed or stolen, and many more are misquoted or misattributed.

The three famous lines in the puzzle and on the cover of Keyes' book: "Elementary, my dear Watson," "Play it again, Sam" and "Beam me up, Scotty."

Trust me (and Keyes): Nobody ever uttered those exact words. If you doubt that, with the help of Keyes' book, you could look it up — which is a saying made famous by Casey Stengel. But Keyes traces that line back to a James Thurber short story.

Keyes comes to a conclusion about most famous quotes in the book, and the verdict on this one is typical: "Credit James Thurber as author, Casey Stengel as publicist."

The "Beam me up" line, from the original "Star Trek" TV series, is so popular, you still see it on bumper stickers — as a real-life illustration of what Keyes calls "bumper-stickering." That's when time and tradition sharpen a wordy aphorism, honing it down into something punchier and more memorable.

"Our memory wants quotations to be better than they usually were, and said by the person we want to have said them," Keyes writes. "That is why misremembered quotations so often improve on real ones."

"The Quote Verifier" can be read as a reference book, looking up quotations alphabetically by a key word — "You could LOOK it up" is listed that way under L. Or, you can read the whole book — which is really a page-turner because you keep encountering intriguing people, also listed alphabetically.

Keyes calls these people — from Yogi Berra to Oscar Wilde — "flypaper figures," because so many clever quotes just stick to them — often with no factual proof. Other primary "flypaper figures" include Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Will Rogers, George Bernard Shaw and Mark Twain.

Among Keyes' maxims is, the more we quote, the more likely we misquote. As just one example, for years I've been quoting Lincoln as saying, "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." Keyes could find no evidence that Lincoln ever said that.

Because Lincoln is among those most quoted, it's inevitable that he's also among the most misquoted. That's another maxim from Keyes' book.

Keyes also questions the parentage of another of my favorite quotes: "There are three kinds of lies — lies, damned lies and statistics." The line is usually attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, prime minister of Britain — sometimes to Mark Twain, who quoted it often, occasionally, but not always, crediting Disraeli. Keyes' conclusion: "Author yet to be determined."

Some "flypaper figures" are famous for polishing "ad libs" in private and casually dropping them into conversation. Dorothy Parker and Oscar Wilde seem to be charter members of this exclusive club. Wilde even wrote and rewrote a deathbed quip. Keyes concludes it was uttered well before his death: "My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go."

What is the most popular quotation of all? According to Keyes, editors of "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations," conducted a poll and concluded the most quoted — and most misattributed — line is, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

It was a favorite quotation for John F. Kennedy, who attributed the line to British philosopher Edmund Burke. Keyes concludes the line is an orphan.

At times, you can get the impression the title of Keyes' book could have been "The Quote Debunker." Both authenticity and parentage of more than 400 quotations are held up to scrutiny so close it doesn't allow for much wishful quoting.

But Keyes does include some gems you may never have heard before: "Amateurs built the ark — professionals built the Titanic" (author unknown); and, "If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament." (Usually attributed to Gloria Steinem, who admits she got the line from an elderly woman cab driver in Boston.)

Another maxim of quotations: When a line originates with someone obscure, it will be attributed to the most famous person who starts quoting it.

That's why Ronald Reagan is usually credited with the line, "Make my day" — which he said in daring Congress to send him a bill that he had promised to veto. Keyes traces the line back to serious sentiment in 19th century love poems, though Reagan's use was ironic — as was his source, in all probability. In the movie "Sudden Impact," Clint Eastwood — as a San Francisco policeman — dares an armed robber to reach for his gun: "Go on, punk — make my day." For putting that familiar spin on the phrase, credit screenwriter Joseph Stinson.

For all the 460 quotes in the book, some of my favorites aren't included. Keyes offers a half-dozen quotes about politics, but not my favorite James Reston line, "It's only dangerous if you inhale." (He was warning not to take politics seriously.)

Neither will you find the priceless line that I've always attributed to Ogden Nash: "Progress was a good thing once, but it went on too long." Please don't ask me to prove when or where Nash said that, but I am grateful Keyes didn't track it down and tell me my favorite poet never said any such thing.

Though Dorothy Parker is featured as a key "flypaper figure," the book doesn't include her acerbic critique of a novel: "This book should not be put down lightly — it should be thrown with great force."

Yogi Berra wrote a small book titled, "I Never Said All Those Things I Said," and Parker shared his sentiment. "I say hardly any of those clever things that are attributed to me," she said. "I wouldn't have time to earn a living if I said all those things."

Keyes' book has some huge advantages over previous compilations of quotations. For one, it's new — published this year by St. Martin's Press.

Yellow Springs News [OH]

Keyes’s book for word-lovers

Jane Baker

We all know that Mark Twain said, “Golf is a good walk spoiled” and “Whenever I feel an urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away” and that Abraham Lincoln said “A lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client”—right? Wrong! As Ralph Keyes points out in his latest book, The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When (St. Martin’s Griffin), quotes are often incorrectly attributed to the famous. 

In the case of the golf quote, no scholar has been able to verify that Twain actually said it. The line about exercise, also often attributed to Robert Maynard Hutchins, former University of Chicago president, was most likely by the humorist J. P. McEvoy. And Lincoln is only one of many credited with making the lawyer remark, for which no source has been identified. Often, to paraphrase (misquote?) Keyes, “quotes migrate from obscure to more prominent mouths.” 

Another eye-opener here is the fact that so many “well-known” quotes are actually misquotations, the original phrase having been pared down to catchier and more memorable words. An example: Leo Durocher’s “Nice guys finish last” was originally “The nice guys are all over there. In seventh place.” Over time these words were “condensed and polished into the terse version that became the most familiar of American quotations.”

An impressive amount of research has gone into Keyes’s engrossing book. It’s a handy reference volume, with its entries arranged alphabetically by key words, but also a delight just to dip into randomly or to read straight through. The book’s many “sidebars” (I put that in quotes since these are boxed and highlighted sections of the text, some running several pages) focus on individuals (among them Twain, Yogi Berra, Benjamin Franklin) and topics (e.g., movie lines, Vietnam, civil rights). Detailed notes on sources, many of them found on the Internet, a bibliography, and indexes of key words and names make this a very useful resource for anyone interested in learning who actually said what.

Keyes navigated some tricky terrain in researching this book. As he points out in his excellent introduction, even reliable sources can err, and it’s likely that quotations “everyone knows” are misquotations. Each discussion ends with a pithy “verdict.” Anyone who loves words will love this book.

Saturday Evening Post

"Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!"

"History is bunk."

"We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

Almost every American knows these famous quotations and who said them. Or do we? That's the big question Ralph Keyes addresses in his new book, The Quote Verifier.

"Discovering who actually said what, where, and when is a challenge for anyone who wishes to quote others," Keyes writes in the introduction to his book. Just how much of a challenge is made clear through Keyes' impressive research that turns up evidence not only of widespread misquotation, but also of misappropriation of even some of our most beloved lines.

Like it or not, Keyes has discovered that many of the familiar lines we sling around so cavalierly are often merely simulacra or condensed versions of what actually was said. Consider the heroic utterance, "Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead." Rear Admiral David Farragut said, or more likely shouted, this or something like it as he led the Union fleet through Mobile Bay during the Civil War. The situation was, a ship in the lead had hit a mine, and a ship coming behind had balked at going ahead. If Farragut had been thinking more about posterity instead of about just getting through alive, he might actually have said what is quoted. According to those present, his real words were, "Damn the torpedoes! Four bells! Captain Drayton, go ahead." Time and history book editors have put more snap into his statement, ensuring its immortality.

Quote tampering can be less flattering as well. Consider the best remembered statement from the lips of automobile pioneer Henry Ford History is bunk.

According to Keyes, it comes from a 1916 interview with Chicago Tribune reporter Charles N. Wheeler, in which Ford was asked about the historical context of his pro-disarmament views. "What do we care what they did five hundred or one thousand years ago? . . . History is more or less bunk. It's tradition. We don't want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker's dam is the history we make today." The three word version, "History is bunk," Keyes notes, is “just one more unflattering abridgement of a prominent man's words. "

Sigmund Freud received similar treatment with his famous quoted statement, "What does a woman want?" This has given posterity the impression that the great founder of psychotherapy really didn't understand women. Actually, Keyes explains, those words cannot be found in any of Freud's writings. Rather, they come from scribbled notes of his patient, Marie Bonaparte, during a session with Freud in which Freud was probably remarking about his difficult relationship with his daughter, Anna, and not about women in general. "Freud may not have been so clueless about women, as so many take for granted," Keyes concludes.

And then there are quotes that are completely misrepresented, such as Ben Franklin's immortal remark at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, "We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." This statement was not made by Franklin, Keyes states. Not only is there no contemporary account of Franklin having said it, but well into the 19th century, the famous pun was attributed to the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, Richard Penn, grandson of William Penn. According to family history, when his revolutionary colleagues told him "we must all hang together," Penn responded, "If you do not, gentlemen, I can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately." This version, according to Keyes, appeared in 1830s accounts. It was an 1840 biography that transferred the quote to Franklin's mouth. "And there it has stayed," he writes. Franklin got the last word on the Penns, a family he was often at odds with.

In his book, Keyes ferrets out some 460 famous sayings, each one a mini detective story. He also includes popular sayings such as the George W. Bush's favorite: "He can run, but he can't hide" (actually said by a famous black prize fighter) and "make my day" (which dates back at least to 1825). With his fascinating work, Keyes joins a growing army of quote verifiers whom he has dubbed "quotographers," those determined to clean up the sloppy world of quotation and get to the bottom of just who really did say what.

Richmond (VA) Times-Dispatch 

Say what? Here's some help with the what -- and the who

Jann Malone

Read a reference book from cover to cover?

That sounds like something only someone with nothing better to read would do.

But I bet if you pick up a copy of Ralph Keyes' "The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When" (387 pages, St. Martin's Griffin, $15.95), you'll get sucked into it, too.

What fun to discover that baseball's Yogi Berra isn't responsible for some of the best quotes attributed to him. Even he knew it: "I really didn't say everything I said."

Like what? "It's déj? vu all over again" is an unlikely Berraism, Keyes says, as is "Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours."

And, sadly, the research trail also shows that Yogi didn't say "It ain't over till it's over," though I think what he did say is almost as good: "We're not out till we're out."

And if you're thinking what Yogi actually said was "The opera ain't over till the fat lady sings," he didn't. Washington Bullets coach Dick Motta did during the 1978 NBA playoffs.

But he's not the original source. He credits Dan Cook, a San Antonio sportscaster, but Keyes traces its origin back to a widely-repeated Southern saying.

How does this kind of misattribution happen? "The reference we're most likely to consult," Keyes writes, "is our memory."

There's more to it, though: Keyes says people want quotes to come from the people they want them to come from, and they also want them to be better than they actually are.

That's how Winston Churchill's "blood, toil, tears and sweat" became "blood, sweat and tears."

Keyes calls this kind of pruning and improving "bumper-stickering."

In a quote that matches the best in his book, Keyes says: "Memory may be a terrible librarian, but it's a great editor."

Here's more about that Churchill quote: Keyes says "Blood, toil, tears and sweat" left a long literary trail before Churchill used it in 1940.

How does Keyes know all this? Research.

The Internet is both a blessing and a curse, he says. Online tools -- digital books and newspaper databases -- help, but many Web sites contain unverified information.

He even finds errors in "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" and "The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations" and suspects readers will find some in his book, too.

Since he spends a lot of time warning us about accepting quote attributions without checking back to the original sources, it's comforting to find about 75 pages of his own source notes at the back of the book.

The rest of the book is organized alphabetically by key words, which works just fine, as long as your key words match the author's. When they don't, there are three indexes that help: key words, names and sidebars.

Most of the sidebars belong to the most frequently quoted -- or misquoted -- people: Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Ann Landers and the like.

I'd like to give you quotes from them, but I can't. I hear the fat lady singing.

US Airways Magazine

Suspicious Sound Bites?

Patrick Henry’s patriotic demand, “Give me liberty or give me death!” is often quoted by freedom seekers today because of its urgent eloquence. Many great sound bites like this one have become quotable quotes too good to pass up, whether they’re about sports (Leo Durocher’s “Nice guys finish last”), or taking responsibility (“The buck stops here” desktop sign that President Truman became known for).

Some well-spoken folks are so quotable they become veritable cottage industries of attributions, like Mark Twain (“Golf is a good walk spoiled”; “Whenever I get the urge to exercise I lie down until it goes away”; “It is very easy to give up smoking. I’ve done it hundreds of times”). Former baseball star Yogi Berra was so witty he even spawned his own category, Yogi-isms. Such laughable witticisms include “Nobody goes there anymore: it’s too crowded,” and “It’s déjà vu all over again.”

While all these well-circulated sayings are appealing to the ear and mind, they share one common problem: None of the people to whom they’re attributed ever actually said them. At least that’s the claim of The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When, a new book by Ralph Keyes. He extensively examines the origins of hundreds of well-known quotes from historical figures, challenging their veracity and correcting false assumptions. While many of the quotes stand up to his scrutiny, many more do not. If you care whether the words you repeat in speeches, writing, or conversation are accurate, or you just like a fascinating read, check this book out:

From Amazon.com 

5 Stars

VERIFIABLY EXCELLENT

Reviewer: Paul Kocak (Syracuse)

I was so impressed with a newspaper feature on Ralph Keyes's The Quote Verifier that I ordered the book right away. I was not disappointed. There are few books I have ever encountered that are more thoroughly researched -- and so entertaining. The book is either a conversation starter (or spoiler, depending on your audience). Keyes delights in debunking commonly held assumptions about famous quotes, but there's no malice. Just meticulous and entertaining research. He points out the evolution of quotations (often much like the children's game of Telephone). I love how this wonderful reference is organized: alphabetically according to key words, interspersed with special sections on those who are frequently quoted, and a "verdict" at the end of each entry to help the reader reach a decision on a quote's origin or evolution). Thus, a special section on Yogi Berra tracks down a bunch of alleged "Yogi-isms." You might be surprised. I was. Gems abound a nearly every page. And the research is cited in a way that makes it fun to learn the origin of a phrase (or the lack of such knowledge). An example is the famous phrase "Iron Curtain." It is commonly known that Winston Churchill used that phrase in a 1946 sppech about Soviet influence. But Keyes exhaustively points out a whole bunch of similar uses that occurred much earlier. Then he gives a verdict: "Many authors, one key publicist -- Winston Churchill." I loved reading the blurb on the phrase "fifteen minutes of fame" (is it Andy Warhol's? Hey, I don't want to give away the juicy tidbits) and on the phrase "May you live in interesting times" (is it really of Chineses origin?). And so many others. Keyes's book has delighted me so much I recently found it a worthy companion on a long trip. I recommend this book to teachers and professors (even just to educate students in acquiring a healthy skepticism), news reporters and editors, talk show hosts, and anyone interested in history or good conversation. It should be on every library shelf, both public and private.

5 stars

A MAGNIFICENT BOOK

Reviewer: Patrick O'Connor, writer and book lover (Glendale CA)

The Quote Verifier is entirely magnificent. Who can resist this book? I can't stop reading it. It's like eating peanuts: once you start you can't stop.

Patrick O'Connor author of Don’t Look Back

5 stars

THE RIGHT VERIFIER

Reviewer: L. Longfellow

I could not have imagined a reference book that reads like a novel. Fortunately, Ralph Keyes could. An exceptional accomplishment.

Layne Longfellow, Ph.D., Author, Longfellow Reads Longfellow

WORTH EVERY PENNY

4 stars

Reviewer: Phillip G. Knightley

This book does exactly what the title says it does. All those quotes you use from time to time and never know the source are now a thing of the past. I wrote a book once called "The First Casualty", taken from the quote "The first casualty when war comes is truth." I looked it up in this book and there it all was--who said it, where and when and an assessment of the value to place on each attribution. The book is worth every penny you pay for it.

5 stars

YOU CAN QUOTE ME ON THIS

Reviewer: Beckman Communications "book doctor" (Cincinnati, Ohio)

Two years ago, my co-workers made fun of me because I tried to use the word "eponymous" in a news release. They deleted it, saying that no one knows what that word means anymore. One of the many things I like about Ralph Keyes is that he uses words like "eponymous" -- and he expects that you'll know what it means, too. Keyes' writing will either teach you some really cool words to use at cocktail parties -- or make you wish that you had paid more attention during your 8th-grade vocabulary class.

With Quote Verifier (QV), Keyes has added more fodder to the quote mill, which he kicked off with his Nice Guys Finish Seventh. QV can be read from beginning to end, or it can be read non-linearly as a reference.

Who originally came up with "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."? Kennedy? Which one? Neither, actually. You'll find this under the alphabetical listings under ASK, where you'll find that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said something remarkably similar 80 years before JFK did. There's an entire section (under the "Ks") devoted to the Kennedys, especially John and Robert. Having grown up in Massachusetts, I was often treated to "Kennedyisms." John Kennedy usually cited his sources. Bobby often cited John and Ted credited Bobby.

Also, as a former and unreformed New Englander, I was ecstatic to see that theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was correctly credited for his "Serenity Prayer," as opposed to "anonymous," which I so often see. (Niebuhr's widow lived up the street from me and was the speaker at my high school graduation.) However, "Shays' Rebellion" was spelled "Shay's Rebellion," a mistake commonly made in the Midwest. Daniel Shays hasn't been quoted for saying anything remarkable, or I'm sure Keyes would have gotten his name right.

The book is organized in a very user-friendly manner. The key words in each quote are in all caps and the quotes are listed alphabetically according to the key words. An index in the back directs you to the people who said -- or didn't -- what you're trying to find. Also in the back is a key word index directing you to the quote.

If you sit down and read this book linearly as I did, a few things are bound to happen:

1) You'll hear people cited for things all over the place for things they didn't think up first. Coincidentally, I was reading the section about an army traveling on its stomach when someone made reference to it on television (attributing it incorrectly to Napoleon, as most people do according to Keyes).

2) You'll be afraid to quote anyone for fear of getting it wrong.

3) You'll wonder how long Keyes worked on digging up each quote's source. His sources range from Celestial Seasonings tea boxes and Reader's Digest (which I am going to take with a grain of salt now) to university libraries and tottering biographers of celebrities of centuries past. If someone ever found the ancient libraries of Alexandria, Keyes would be the first in line to check out who really said that an army travels on its stomach. It's kind of scary.

I wouldn't want this to be a library book that I had to return. I would want it on hand, where I could refer to it frequently and react with my notes in the margins. This book would be a good purchase for people who like to use quotes (in speeches, newsletters, classes) and want to be correct. It would make a great reference for any student or writer, as well as anyone who wants to know more about the history of our favorite expressions.