So why do quotes get false histories? Lots of
reasons.
Misattribution can be
convenient. It’s easy not to question a coinage that it seems
plausible—especially when it just so happens to give us good gravitas by
association.
“You reach for a
famous name to give authority,” says Elizabeth Knowles, editor of the Oxford
Dictionary of Quotations . “You want to say Churchill said it. Because you
have associated what you’re saying with that particular person, it gives the
saying a bit more oomph.” Iron curtain just feels like something a
dulcet, witty orator like Churchill would come up with, right? And it’s a much
clearer signal that you’re educated and that your words have heft if you
attribute a quote to Winston Churchill than to Snowden, an unremembered member
of a trade-union delegation.
Many times people
invoke quotations that were never said at all.
“Play it again, Sam.” Neither Bogart nor
Bergman said these words.
“Elementary, my dear Watson.” Doyle wrote no
such thing.
“Beam me up, Scotty.” Sorry, nope.
These get passed on because we wish people
had uttered them. “A misquotation of that kind can be, almost, what you
feel somebody ought to have said,” says Knowles. “It summarizes for somebody
something very important about a particular film, a particular relationship, a
particular event.” Even if it’s made up and especially if it’s close to things
people really did say, we embrace it as gospel. After all, Bergman did utter,
“Play it, Sam,” in Casablanca. And Bogart did say, “If she can stand
it, I can! Play it!”
Sometimes misquotations get handed down because
they convey the right idea and sound better to us than what the person actually
said.
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln gave a speech in which
he said, “To give victory to the right, not bloody bullets, but peaceful ballots
only, are necessary.” Over time, that sentiment been recrafted as, “The ballot
is stronger than the bullet.” The latter version is snazzier. Even when sources
know this precise phrasing was probably never really used by Lincoln, they
continue to pass it on. Take Dictionary.com’s quotes site , where the well-sourced quote from 1858 is in the fine print.
Also in fine print is the admission that the quote in giant font across the top
of the page was “reconstructed” 40 years after Lincoln was supposed to have said
it. Which, as far as editors at Oxford are concerned, he did not.
Screen shot taken from
Dictionary.com
“It’s a very natural thing, that we edit as we
remember,” Knowles says. “So when we quote something we very often have in mind
the gist of what’s being said. So we may alter it slightly and we may just make
it slightly pithier or simpler for someone else to remember. And that’s the form
that gets passed on.”
While it may be easier to remember that
Churchill invented the iron curtain, here’s the real history:
In its earliest use, circa 1794, an “iron
curtain” was a literal iron screen that would lowered in a theater to protect
the audience and auditorium from any fire occurring backstage. From there, it
became a general metaphor for an impenetrable barrier. In 1819, the Earl of
Muster described the Indian river Betwah as an iron curtain that protected his
group of travelers from an “avenging angel” of death that had been on their
heels in that foreign land. Then, in 1920, Ethel Snowden made it specifically
about the East and West in Throughout Bolshevik Russia
(1920):
At last we were to enter the country where the
Red Flag had become a national emblem, and was flying over every public building
in the cities of Russia. The thought thrilled like new wine … We were behind the
‘iron curtain’ at last!
Read TIME’s original coverage of
the Mar. 5, 1946, speech, here in the TIME Vault:
See Photos From the Speech that Made 'Iron
Curtain' a Household Term George Skadding—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty
Images