Many American presidents have been masters at speaking, writing, and inspiring the masses. Sadly, fake presidential quotes are just as real as actual presidential quotes - and the mis-quotes are often cited by scholars and politicians. Some are decades old and given new life by the Internet, while others are recent inventions dreamed up by authors or anonymous figures.
Spotting fake quotes by United States presidents isn't actually all that hard. First, look for something that doesn't have a source or date attached to it. Many fake quotes used on Internet memes are like this, usually just the quote itself with the speaker's face. If it doesn't have a source, an attribution, or a date, it's likely made up. Also, look for quotes that contradict what you actually know about that president. Many fake quotes attached to Founding Fathers are directly the opposite of what they believed or wrote about. If all that fails, just do a quick search on it. If it's a fake, someone before you figured it out and will let you know.
Here are some of the most famous quotes from US presidents that they didn't actually say.
http://www.ranker.com/list/presidential-misquotes/mike-rothschild,
John Adams and the Three Thirds
The Quote: "I estimate that one-third of Americans supported the Revolution, one-third opposed it, and one-third was neutral."
The Truth: Adams's quote is often used to point out that not all citizens of the colonies were actually against British rule. While this is true, what Adams said has nothing to do with that at all.
The actual quote, from a letter Adams wrote in 1813, is, “I should say that full one third were averse to the revolution. These, retaining that overweening fondness, in which they had been educated, for the English, could not cordially like the French; indeed, they most heartily detested them. An opposite third conceived a hatred for the English, and gave themselves up to an enthusiastic gratitude to France. The middle third, composed principally of the yeomanry, the soundest part of the nation and always averse to war, were rather lukewarm to both England and France…”
He's talking about American views on the French Revolution, not their own.
William McKinley on Filipinos
The Quote: "[T]here was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God’s grace do the very best we could by them, as our fellow-men for whom Christ also died."
The Truth: While this quote appears to be from McKinley in 1903 in a newspaper called The Christian Advocate, it's actually hearsay from the article's author, General James Russling. He's attempting to quote a conversation with McKinley from memory, but there's no veracity to what Russling says McKinley told him. In fact, it runs counter to McKinley's distaste for jingoism and conversion by the sword.
Beyond that, the people of the Philippines were Christian, by and large. They had been converted by Spanish missionaries in the 1500s, and continued that faith under Spanish rule for centuries.
Franklin Roosevelt on Accidents
The Quote: "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
The Truth: This quote doesn't appear in any form until the 1971 book None Dare Call It Conspiracy. FDR is often linked to a number of conspiracies and plots to start wars and crash economies, but he didn't say this. It's a mangling of a quote from a 1935 speech - and it says literally the opposite of the misquote.
FDR actually said, "Yes, we are on our way back— not just by pure chance, my friends, not just by a turn of the wheel, of the cycle. We are coming back more soundly than ever before because we are planning it that way. Don't let anybody tell you differently."
John Qunicy Adams on Christianity and Government
The Quote: "The highest glory of the American Revolution, said John Quincy Adams, was this: it connected, in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
The Truth: Adams's affirmation for the close bond between the US government and Christianity is so prevalent that it's been used in both the Congressional record and a number of conservative fundraising pleas. The date is usually given as either 1821 or 1837, usually attributed to a letter.
But Adams never said it. Instead, the quote has a long, twisted history involving a number of fake citations, going all the way back to a book from 1860. That book, John Wingate Thornton's The Pulpit of The American Revolution doesn't present it as a quote from Adams, but about Adams. It has no quotation marks or source, and the line is nowhere to be found anywhere in anything Adams wrote.
Thomas Jefferson on Government
The Quote: "That government is best which governs least."
The Truth: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker was fond of this particular Thomas Jefferson quote during his brief presidential run, even using it as a meme on Twitter.
He also got into some hot water, because Jefferson didn't say it. Instead, it's a quote from Henry David Thoreau's book Civil Disobedience. Walker didn't respond to the mistake, and the tweet is still up for all to point and laugh at.
John Adams on Debt
The Quote: "There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt."
The Truth: This quote is often used by conservatives to point out the danger of nations running up extreme national debt. Unfortunately, there's no documentation of Adams ever having said this, and the quote has no attribution or date attached to it. Some sources have him using it in a letter in 1826 - the year he died.
Abraham Lincoln on Friendship
The Quote: “If friendship is your weakest point then you are the strongest person in the world.”
The Truth: Often found on inspirational memes, the above quote has no attribution, no source, and appears nowhere in any writings of Lincoln either before or during his presidency. It's also mysterious as to what the quote means. Why would friendship be a person's "weakest point?"
George Washington on the Purpose of the Senate
The Quote: "Even so, we pour legislation into the senatorial saucer to cool it."
The Truth: Purported to come from an exchange of letters between Washington and Thomas Jefferson, this quote, comparing laws to coffee poured into a cup to cool it off, is all over the Internet. It's even cited on the Senate's official web page. The problem is nobody can find evidence of either the quote, or the conversation itself. In fact, there's no reference to the quote at all until 1884, in Harper's Magazine. It's supposedly Washington trying to talk Jefferson into a bicameral legislature - except Jefferson wasn't against one.
Rutherford B. Hayes on the Telephone
The Quote: "It’s a great invention, but who would ever want to use one?"
The Truth: This quote, which has been floating around the Internet for years, got new life when President Obama used it in a speech in 2012. But his staff should have done their due diligence, because appears Hayes never to have said it. He also had a fondness for new technology - the telephone, in particular. Hayes arranged for the first presidential phone to be installed in May 1877, with the White House being assigned the phone number "1."
Thomas Jefferson on Liberty
The Quote: "When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
The Truth: There are so many fake Thomas Jefferson quotes that the third president's estate, Monticello, maintains a website devoted just to debunking things he never said. Probably the most widely quoted faux Jefferson line is this one, often used by Second Amendment advocates and small government conservatives.
As the Monticello site makes clear, Jefferson never said either this or any of its variations. Instead, it appears to be from a debate on socialism from 1914.