Blog 3973 – 10.10.2026

Misappropriated Quotes

I saw the picture quote today on Social Media and immediately checked to see if Mark Twain really said that. I was informed that “this phrase is an apocryphal quote that first emerged during the Occupy Wall Street movement and was first tracked online around September 2011.” It is not unusual for people to claim famous people said things they did not. Albert Einstein, and George Carlin are often misquoted. Why even the four Gospels in the New Testament are attributed to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and there is no credible evidence of that authorship being accurate.

My dad was a wonderful story-teller. He polished his stories to almost perfection retelling them countless times. You could tell him a story and if he liked it he would make it a part of his repertoire. I called him once on telling a story that supposedly happened to him that I, myself, had told him a year before. He grinned sheepishly and said, “Stories sound better in first person.”

Telling stories is a euphemism for lying, but more often it is just a literary device called poetic license. And most often writers attribute their words to more famous people to get reader to think them more credible. Even though Mark Twain never said the words of today’s picture quote they ring true.

Rich people would do well to remember that some effort must be put forth to maintain the rouse that the their great wealth was not acquired by robbing the poor. For the record the New Testament book of James, a book that Martin Luther said did not belong in the Bible, probably was not written by James, but there is nevertheless a great warning to rich people in it:

That guy, whatever his name was did not pull his punches. It reminds me of that scene where Jesus made a whip of chords and drove the cattle out of the Temple court yard and overturned the tables of the money changers who were over-charging the poor people. Just taking care of business or in Jesus words, “Turning my Father’s house that was meant to be a place of prayer into a den of thieves.”

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White