History BeamMeUpScotty / Politics

** Also, someone once wrote to ''The Strand'' magazine [[GrammarNazi complaining that someone had ended a sentence with a preposition]]. Somebody commented in reply, ''"This is nonsense up with which I will not put,"'' often attributed to Churchill but it almost certainly wasn't him. This misattribution may originally owe to the simple expedient that the kind of KnowNothingKnowItAll who still insists on following this "rule" ''decades'' after it was thoroughly discredited as an artificial construct with less bearing on how English is actually used than Japanese verb conjugation would be more swayed by a sentence constructed to prove its absurdity if it comes from someone known for eloquent, moving speeches than from some random person writing to a magazine.

* Néstor Kirchner never asked "¿Qué te pasa Clarín, estás nervioso?" (What's wrong Clarín, are you nervous?) in reference to the Clarín newspaper. He got angry with an electoral defeat at Catamarca during the 2009 midterm elections, and blamed Clarín for it. At one point of his speech he said "Clarín, no sé por qué estás tan nervioso" (Clarín, I don't know why are you so nervous). At another point he asked "¿Qué te pasa Clarín?" (What's wrong Clarín?), but only that. The TV comedy "Gran Cuñado", a parody of ''Series/BigBrother'' starring parodies of politicians, took both phrases and mixed them toguether for the CatchPhrase of Kirchner's parody.

:::However, this quote actually originated from a 1907 paper, intending to summarize common complaints against youth in Ancient Greece. The quote was to attributed to Socrates by Gijsbert van Hall, mayor of Amsterdam in the 1960s. There are somewhat similar complaints in Plato and Hesiod, but not the above paragraph.

:::However, this was actually attributed to him by Gijsbert van Hall, mayor of Amsterdam in the 1960s. There are somewhat similar complaints in Plato and Hesiod, but not the above paragraph.

** Compounding this, the common version of the quote is often misattributed to either Katharine Graham or Susan Sontag. For additional confusion, it's occasionally applied to Ronald Reagan's victory in 1984 instead of Nixon.
** It should be noted, though, that Kael was well aware of the comment being attributed to her, and did nothing to discourage it. According to her biographer she ''delighted'' in it, not so much because it expressed her views but because it aggravated conservatives.
** Even when the wording of the quote is accurate, it's still often cited[[note]]as in [[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/30/opinion/politics/bubble-politics.html this 2020 piece]] from the ''New York Times''[[/note]] with the false implication that she was surprised by Nixon's 1972 landslide victory.

*** Likewise, he did not claim to have "discovered" Love Canal, or to have been the inspiration for Oliver Barrett IV in Erich Segal's ''Literature/LoveStory''.

** Thatcher never said "Whoever thinks the ANC is going to run South Africa anytime soon lives in [[{{cloudcuckooland}} cloud cuckoo land]]". The actual quote was said by Thatcher's spokesman, Bernard Ingham, during a conference in 1987: "It is cloud cuckooland for anyone to believe that could be done." The "that" was a Canadian reporter's proposed scenario of the ANC coming to power in South Africa after violently overthrowing the white-led regime. Ingham was, therefore, entirely right, because the ANC never overthrew the regime by force of arms. Instead, the ANC became the dominant party in South Africa after the peaceful dismantlement of [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid]].

* PM José María Aznar did not say "I speak Catalan in private", but the more verbose "I don't just read [Catalan] for many years now, but also understand it and, moreover, when I am in close circles, not quite large, I also speak it too."

* Boabdil, the last Muslim king of Granada, most likely wasn't told by his mother Aixa to "[[FemaleMisogynist Cry like a woman what you couldn't defend like a man.]]" This line first appears in the 1764 book ''Los Paseos de Granada'', almost three centuries after Boabdil's death.

** Stalin is also sometimes credited with "death solves all problems. There is a person - there is a problem. No person - no problem". This is in fact from a novel ''Children of Arbat'' by A. Rybakov.

* Boabdil, the last Muslim king of Granada, most likely wasn't told by his mother Aixa to "[[FemaleMisogynist Cry like a woman what you couldn't defend like a man.]]" The claim he did first appears in the 1764 book ''Los Paseos de Granada'', almost three centuries after Boabdil's death.

* Technically speaking, UsefulNotes/HarrySTruman ''did'' say "If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em", but it was in reference to it being an "old political trick" that he was disparaging. The full quote is as follows:

* "When fascism [or tyranny] comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag." Some people add "and carrying a cross". This has been attributed both to UsefulNotes/HueyLong and to Creator/SinclairLewis, who made a Long-esque fascist demagogue the antagonist of ''Literature/ItCantHappenHere''. Lewis did write in ''It Can't Happen Here'' that "the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty." But it's very likely that the original quote came from the Rev. Halford E. Luccock, in a 1938 sermon, speaking about the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee#Dies_Committee_.281938.E2.80.931944.29 HUAC / Dies Committee]].

* A famous quote by Zhou Enlai is probably the result of a misunderstanding with the translator. He is frequently quoted as saying about the French Revolution (the one of 1789) that it was "too early to tell" what it had meant. However, it is more likely that he understood the question to instead refer to the (then recent) 1968 French protests. And given that they involved a fair number of people who saw themselves as Maoists and/or took inspiration from the "Red Book", it is not unreasonable to assume Zhou was speaking about current events, not making an IceCreamKoan statement about early modern history.

** A 'Bismarck quote' popularized [[SelfDeprecation in Spain]] after the advent of the internet states that "Spain is the strongest nation in the world. [[WeAreStrugglingTogether It has tried to destroy itself for centuries]] [[StealthInsult without success.]]" Bismarck never made a similar statement. The quote is first documented in a speech by Alfonso Guerra in 1974, where he introduced it as a supposed old saying but didn't attribute it to anyone.

* Helmut Kohl's most famous quote (for the HehHehYouSaidX subtext) ''Entscheidend ist, was hinten rauskommt'' ("The crucial thing is what comes out at the end") is commonly quoted wrong as "Am wichtigsten ist..."

** During a famous debate moment in which an audience member asked the candidates how the national debt had affected each of them personally [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ffbFvKlWqE]], Clinton is commonly remembered as having said "I feel your pain." While his response conveyed empathy more effectively than the other candidates, he never used those words or anything close.

* UsefulNotes/BarackObama is often quoted as saying that the U.S. has 57 states. What he actually said was "I’ve now been in 57 states? I think one left to go [Oregon]. Alaska and Hawaii...I was not allowed to go to even though I really wanted to visit, but my staff would not justify it." He should have said "47 states", but in his speech mistakenly implied that there were 60 in total, probably by doing the math in his head as he was speaking (50 minus 3) and not noticing what he was saying. The comment was made during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, which has 56 contests including non-states like D.C. and Puerto Rico.

** "The fascists of the future will call themselves anti-fascists", often used to discredit people who call themselves anti-fascists.

* "When fascism [or tyranny] comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag." Some people add "and carrying a cross". This has been attributed both to UsefulNotes/HueyLong and to Creator/SinclairLewis, the latter of whom did write (in his novel ''Literature/ItCantHappenHere'') that "the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty." But it's very likely that the original quote came from the Rev. Halford E. Luccock, in a 1938 sermon, speaking about the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_Un-American_Activities_Committee#Dies_Committee_.281938.E2.80.931944.29 HUAC / Dies Committee]].

* Creator/JohnSteinbeck is often quoted as having stated that "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." This actually paraphrases part of an essay he wrote for ''Esquire'' magazine in 1960, in which the "deluded" people he was talking about weren't the poor at all.

--->Yet even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes. Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America — there's the United States of America. There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and patriots who supported it. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

** One false phrase often claimed in Literature/HorribleHistories is "Told you so," in response to UsefulNotes/NevilleChamberlain's perceived naivety when attempting to appease UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, only for the latter to then break his promise not long after. Carried over to the TV sketch show.

** One false phrase often claimed in Literature/HorribleHistories by Literature/TerryDeary is "Told you so," in response to UsefulNotes/NevilleChamberlain's perceived naivety when attempting to appease UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler, only for the latter to then break his promise not long after. Carried over to the TV sketch show.

** One false phrase often claimed in Literature/HorribleHistories by Creator/TerryDeary is "Told you so," in response to Neville Chamberlain's perceived naivety when attempting to appease Adolf Hitler, only for the latter to then break his promise not long after. Carried over to the TV sketch show.