Incorrect Quotes

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Woody55

New member
I see a whole lot of complaining about anti-gun people distorting the truth. That's fine. It should be pointed out.

But look to yourselves too.

I see all sorts of quotes attributed to the founding fathers. Some have styles that are so obviously written by someone the 20th or 21st century that they are funny. Some are just subtly wrong.

For instance, "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes...Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." is attributed to Thomas Jefferson in 1776.

He didn't say this or write this. It was written by someone else, quoted by Jefferson in a book with his notation that the idea was not useful.

This is a very useful source for Jefferson sayings. http://www.monticello.org/

If you use it to search "arms" you'll find some things that Jefferson said and some things that he didn't say. There is a summary of a chain email that is going around that is enlightening.

The anti-gun crowd likes to portray us as ignorant and uneducated. Don't give them any help. Be critical before you start throwing quotes around.
 
Quotes

Thanks for the link. I've seen many instances as well of people referencing quotes by Hamilton and Madison contained in some of the Federalist essays that when I went back to read the quote, it simply was not there.
 
"The probelm with the internet is that you can't always tell whether the quotes are accurate." - Abraham Lincoln
 
"The probelm with the internet is that you can't always tell whether the quotes are accurate." - Abraham Lincoln
Click to expand...

LOL, that was Samuel Clemens referring to how his alter ego Mark Twain was misquoted on the internet.

Seriously, the point is a good one. Arguments based or supported on incomplete, manipulated, misworded, or otherwise incorrect quotes are arguments that are not well based or well supported by such quotes and they make the person passing off such errant information appear to not comprehend what s/he is talking about, even if the goal of the citation was noble. One can get by with the gist of quoting via paraphrasing, but the paraphrasing needs to be inclusive of the correct content and intent of the original quote in order to be appropriately applied or it is no better than incorrect quoting.

Of course, this also applies to actual data that is often bantered about.
 
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