Great Untruths, Part 1
The other day I saw another collection of short, witty, anti-government quotes titled “Great Truths”. A number of people have reposted the list. One problem, though: it’s full of misattributions, quotes taken out of context, and outright fabrications. Using these kinds of quotes is a worthless ploy to rally people behind cheap, populist causes without question.
"If I were as smart as you thought I was when I wasn't saying something, I'd be as dumb you if I did. Oh and I'm coming back on my comet to kill you all." -Mark Twain, Tibetan Monk.
Here are a few of the problems with the list, just to name a few:
In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm and three or more is a congress. — John Adams
This is actually a quote from the musical 1776.
If you don’t read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed. — Mark Twain
This is a favorite of those who can’t stand the elitist, leftist, liberal, biased, truth-hating, self-centered, socialist, anti-American “media”. Various authors, some of them almost reputable, have used it as proof that newspapers are out to lie to us. On page 40 of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Your Civil Liberties by Amherst College graduate and UCLA/NYU professor Michael Levin, he sources the quote from Twain’s travelogue Innocents Abroad, which is available for free. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time to read the entire work, but Google Books allows readers to search through the text of the book. There are no occurrences of the words “misinformed” or “uninformed” in the entire 600+ page work. Twain does discuss newspapers in Europe and Asia, but he critiques the governments’ treatment of them, not the profession itself. Of course, Twain’s trip was funded by — you guessed it — a newspaper. Twain was a journalist, folks.
I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. — Winston Churchill
Churchill made the bucket analogy as early as 1903, but various sources for the quote cite other sources, ad nauseam. This isn’t to say he never made it in any other context, but this analogy pertains to protectionism, not income taxes, as this list implies. The full quote is:
“Will the shutting out of foreign goods increase the total amount of wealth in this country? Can foreign nations grow rich at our expense by selling us goods under cost price? Can a people tax themselves into prosperity? Can a man stand in a bucket and lift himself up by the handle?”
Reagan did manage to mangle this one in 1982, which is probably why right wingers parrot it endlessly.
A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw
Because they’re looking through tinted glasses of opportunism, right-wingers see this as a statement about taxation, not corruption. Shaw was an ardent socialist. It’s not a secret, but you’d think people would look that up before using it as an anti-government sound bite.
A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. — G. Gordon Liddy
You’re joking, right? Are we really going to use the man who orchestrated one of the most famous burglaries in history as a legitimate source on this issue? Really?
Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. — Douglas Casey, Classmate of Bill Clinton at Georgetown University
Something tells me Casey, a radical free market economist (he plans to buy a country and put it on the stock exchange), would be a little annoyed that his main claim to fame is being a classmate of Clinton’s. Why would they leave his philosophy out of the description? Oh, yeah, because it’s silly to use quotes from people who are already on your side of the argument.
Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. — Frederic Bastiat, French economist (1801-1850)
Another extreme free market guy (he inherited his fortune, like most free market guys, and they’re almost always guys), Frédéric Bastiat was also… you guessed it, a politician. Thinking that government is the “great fiction” and holding public office is like being president of Liberty University and a member of the ACLU.
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free! — P.J. O’Rourkeand
In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. — Voltaire (1764)
I find it hilarious that the first of these two quotes represents a mentality that Voltaire would despise. How many times have conservatives used the excuse that our health care system is the “best in the world” as an excuse to avoid changing it any substantive way? Anyone with a basic knowledge of Voltaire’s Candide would immediately call to mind the “best of all possible worlds” theme. This is why quotes like these often fail: we don’t understand the oeuvre. Voltaire may have said that government is something, but his point was to engender change to make sure government will not always be what he talks about here. If someone says “television shows suck”, even if they are correct, that does not mean a television show could never be good, just that the current shows suck.
Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you! — Pericles (430 B.C.)
Perhaps Pericles said it, but no one has ever found the source. Plus, how many people actually know who Pericles was? To a conservative or libertarian, if somebody said it more than a hundred years ago, it must be true, and if there’s a “B.C.” at the end of it, it must be gospel.
No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. — Mark Twain (1866)
Mark Twain didn’t say this; rather, Gideon Tucker did. Why would someone switch the names? Sure, there’s name recognition for Twain but… oh, wait, Tucker was also a newspaper man and a politician. Oh, and he wrote bills for things like labor laws, the antithesis of the free market ideology.
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. — Winston Churchill
Churchill said this, but an interesting context: he was attempting to speed up demobilization after World War II. In other words, he wanted bring the men in the armed forces back faster. Where have I heard that before? Anyway, his next sentence was:
In the present case, where an overwhelming majority of Service men and women would gain the blessings, can we not unite on the broad democratic principle of “the greatest good of the greatest number”?
Oh no, doing something for the greatest good of the greatest number! He sounds just like those Occupy Movement hippies! Then the guy who spoke after him, Minister of Labor George Isaacs, said “[e]ven his peroration is a bit stale and outworn.
Seriously, people. Just because someone says that a famous person once made a statement that could be construed as bolstering your side of a contemporary political position doesn’t mean you have to blindly accept it at face value.
