“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.”
As a kind of minor aside, almost every time I see a misattributed quote like this, it comes from a self-help book.
We seem to be collectively embarrassed that we like content from self-help books. We need to pretend that we're quoting the Dalai Lama or Malcolm X instead.
This seems unfair. Maybe we should give self-help authors a little more credit. If they say things that ring true to us and that we want to share with others, maybe they deserve some credit for that.
IIRC misattribution is used since the Middle Age, when some authors attributed their own ideas, or good citations from obscure authors, to famous people like Aristoteles or Plato, just because Winston Churchill was't yet born.
Another problem: misattributing quotes makes it hard for the reader to learn more.
If the quote is correctly attributed, they can look up the author's other quotes or even complete full writings and speeches and maybe learn more.
The best they can do with a misattributed quote is use a search engine on the text. Usually this won't work since the misattribution is often widespread.
The main benefit you get from misattributed quotes is that you find out which of your friends is credulous enough to think that someone would buy an entire bus stop ad solely to share a snappy quote about the paradoxes inherent in capitalism
@evan I clicked "yes" in terms of absurd hilarity, so I guess it's context specific. Like the ones that have Abraham Lincoln quoted for something recent, it is supposed to be obvious that the misattribution is intentional.
@evan same deal with 'commonly accepted truths'. Lots of people believing a thing in error does not make it true. It makes lots of people wrong. This is still somehow a controversial concept
I try to make sure the quotes I share are correctly attributed, but bad history and myth-making are so prevalent that I won't blame anyone for accidentally sharing a misattributed quote, so I answered qualified no.
Also, good quotes have a certain positive power whatever the attribution and I'd rather people over-share inspiration than under-share it because they are nervous it's wrongly attributed.
@Loukas Here's what you said: “Also, good quotes have a certain positive power whatever the attribution and I'd rather people over-share inspiration than under-share it because they are nervous it's wrongly attributed.”
So, what I believe you're saying here is that you'd rather people spread satisfying lies (X said Y) than that they don't spread them.
@evan What I'm talking about is a calculation about how much due diligence it's reasonable to expect from people, and how I see wrong quotes that accidentally get through.
Saying I want people to share lies is a very hostile interpretation. Tbh it makes me regret discussing this with you.
@Loukas
If you think "lie" is too strong -- I don't think so, since someone along the chain intentionally and knowingly put that false attribution in place, but OK -- should we say, satisfying falsehoods?
I am not hostile to you; I don't know you very well. You seem nice, though!
I am hostile to the idea that we should spread posts that say what we want to hear even if they're untrue. I think it's very bad for society. The misattributed quote slips very easily into the made-up news story.
@evan The lack of awareness around this tendency is a profound failure of curiosity, intellect, and humility. People believe things because they feel good on some level; they allow themselves to be lied to. This feels like the single most consequential human failing. It underlies everything bad that’s happening.
@evan To be fair, Williamson probably appropriated it from someone else herself! Her whole philosophy is kind of just a repackaging of other new age stuff.
@evan The editor of my current book (it is a new edition of my first title) is insisting on proper attribution for every quote in it.
The process has been very eye-opening - especially finding out how few of some of the great quotes about software have a definitive source.
In some cases, the best we can do is a bunch of the author's friends all saying: "Oh yeah, we totally heard them say that or something very similar loads of times".
@evan Do you disagree in the sense that you think it's wrong even if you find it funny, or do you disagree in the sense that you don't ever find it funny?
@evan What is social media for if not to share inspirational quotes, with no thought or knowledge of their source (or even meaning) because freedom of expression.
@evan try to verify the quote first, but ultimately I feel the wisdom is more important than who said it. If a mistake is discovered, then correct it. So I went with QY.
Of course, it's a lot worse when a particular quote reflects badly on someone who didn't actually say it, so be extra careful with those.
@evan Strong no.
The main problem is that a lot of those quotes are not easily attributable cause there are no proofs of them being correct but people have already assumed the origin of it. So We all have shared a quote that it was incorrectly attributed.
@evan Really surprised by the overwhelming majority of the "no" votes here. Lighten up people, it's about inspirational quotes on social media, not perjuring yourself in a court of law...
@evan I don't know, that sounds a lot like a slippery-slope argument to me, which are almost always wrong. Misattributed motivational quotes are a long way from targeted disinformation campaigns, and if you want to argue that condoning the former will somehow lead to the latter, then that's a strong claim that requires evidence.
@brecht There's not a clear line between misattributing a quote to Gloria Steinem and misattributing a quote to Hillary Clinton.
"It feels right and that's what matters" is how disinformation works.
Nobody has to solve it. We each need to be careful with the words we use and the news we spread, and hold each other accountable so that lies don't spread further.
@evan The reason why conspiracy theories about the political elites "feel right" to a lot of people is because it explains things they've experienced in their own lives. Ordinary people have actually been screwed over by the elites in the past half century. See for example the real wages graph below.
It's this reality that provides the fertile soil for the vilest of online conspiracies. So I just don't believe that focusing on minor infractions like misattributed quotes will change anything.
@apophis What examples of misattribution being "hurtful" does this article cite? I count approximately zero.
Sure, it's annoying to deal with for historians, like the author of the article. But I don't see anything in this article to suggest these misattributions are harmful to regular people.
@evan Qualified no. Misattributed quotes are somewhat harmful, but they're not an active danger to our democracy like sharing alt-right content, which we should avoid sharing even to critique it, since you are amplifying its reach.
Often the misattributions erase less powerful people in favor of people who already enjoy more fame and are therefore more recognizable. But if the meaning is good, it's possible that sharing it could be a net positive under some circumstances.
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