What They Didn’t
Say: A Book of Misquotations. Elizabeth Knowles, ed.. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2006. Pp. 153. $19.95, hardcover. ISBN: 0-19-920359-8. TEL:
800-451-7556
This little book is the flip side of The English Reader: What Every Literate
Person Needs to Know. What They Didn’t Say is a compilation of famous
lines that are frequently either misquoted or attributed to the wrong people.
For example, we are all familiar with, “England and America are two
countries divided by a common language.” According to the book, the
quotation is commonly attributed to George Bernard Shaw. I have always assumed
it came from Winston Churchill. As it turns out, neither man said or wrote
it.
Rather, in Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost, the American Mrs. Otis
is described in the following passage: “She had a magnificent constitution,
and a really wonderful amount of animal spirits. Indeed, in many respects
she was quite English, and was an excellent example ample of the fact that
we have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course,
language.”
And, of course, we all know the famous “And, so, my fellow Americans:
ask now what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your
country.” from John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. I was a little
surprised to learn that this famous quotation is a slightly altered line from
a speech Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., made in 1884. His
line was: “We pause to … recall what our country has done for
each of us and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.”
And then there is Willie Sutton’s famous, “I rob banks because
that’s where the money is.” Here, What They Didn’t Say defers
to The American National Biography, which notes that “Sutton later denied
having made the remark, but he was astute enough to know that in the business
of newspaper headlines a good legend beats the truth every day.”
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