The first misquote I found was by Martin Luther King. When a person searches for Martin Luther King quotes, they might stumble across "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy." This was actually never said by Dr. King. Nick Ramsey from MSNBC did some research one this and found a longer quote that includes said misquote but he couldn't find any journalist reliable sources. He then came across an article by The Atlantic. Apparently, the quote was originally posted by a Facebook user as she was leading up to an actual Dr. King quote and people mistook it for something he said.
It is widely known that Gandhi once said, “be the change you wish to see in the world.” What he actually said is “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.” Brian Morton from The New York Times found out that there is actually no reliable documentary evidence that Gandhi ever said this. Morton writes that Gandhi's words have been twisted and tweaked over the years by people who wanted to make the quote easy to put on signs and license plate stickers.
A famous quote that most Americans will know it, "that's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Neil Armstrong said this when NASA first landed on the moon. Karen Kaplan wrote about this misquote in the LA Times in 2013. The quote was said wrong on the evening news that night. The actual quote was "that's one small step for a man" which is similar, but the quote was originally misinterpreted because of the static over the radio. Armstrong has reiterated to people what he originally said and has made it clear that its important to him the quote is corrected.
Another misquote I found is something known to be said by Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe is credited with saying, "well-behaved women rarely make history." Kathryn Harrison wrote about this misquote in The New York Times. This quote shaped the say a lot of people admired her. The quote actually came from a female historian named Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, who wrote a book titled the same quote, "well-behaved women rarely make history." Ulrich first wrote the phrase in 1976 for a magazine in reference to colonial women who are not featured in our history books because they are "well behaved."
We all remember learning in 10th-grade history class that in 1775 Paul Revere rode to the colonists yelling "the British are coming, the British are coming!" Well, this is actually not true and Paul Reverse never said this. People thought that he said this because of the famous poem, "Paul Reverses Ride" by Henry Longfellow. The truth is Reverse was not alone on his ride, he was with Samual Adams, John Hancock, and other patriots. He never actually yelled "the British are coming" and the other patriots he was riding with helped him spread the word to the colonies. Jennie Cohen writes about this and other things you may not know about Paul Reverse on History.com
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