Gosh, darn it, Aardvark, you beat me to it
My source was a different one, though:
The Truth About Tytler
Quote:
Who, then, is the author of these quotes? Even after all of my research, I am afraid I still cannot say for certain. But perhaps some conclusions may be drawn.
Each quote can be traced back at least as far as the 1950s, but only with anonymous attribution. Specific attributions, such as those to Tytler, only came later. And, of course, the quotes cannot be found to have appeared together until the 1970s. Each quote has been the subject of authorship inquiries in The New York Times and American Notes & Queries, both of which are notoriously good at verifying authorship of works, but neither of which could provide an author for these quotes.
Some readers may wonder why I chose to quote variations so frequently, and to go into such detail when a shorter examination would do. I had three reasons for this. First, I did a lot of research, and I didn't want to cut too much of my work. Second, I wanted to put any doubts about my thoroughness to rest. And third, through my quoting and detailing, I hoped to illustrate exactly how fluid these quotations have been over the past half century. New words are added, old ones disappear, and attributions and contexts change. That's not typical of a quote that has a definitive and reliable source; it's much more common with proverbs.
These facts lead me to suspect that these quotes were probably coined by separate individuals in the first half of the twentieth century. The authors were most likely not famous persons or respected scholars, but rather just private political thinkers who got their words in print, and whose words then happened to strike a chord in others. The passage of time merely encouraged quoters to attach an author's name that strengthened the authority behind the words.
And that is where the vice of misattribution lies. Perhaps the words speak the truth of democratic governments; or perhaps they do not. But either way, attributing the words to a scholar who never spoke them is to lend to them an authority and reliability that they do not deserve.
Anonymous quotes, which these almost certainly are, should not be given fictitious attributions merely to lend credence to the messages they impart. To do so is to favor persuasiveness over accuracy, and to sacrifice truth for the sake of image.
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But that's presumably the point of aarable posting his collection of favourite quotes. He still hasn't realised, IMHO, that the members of this forum are too intelligent not to do their own background research.
He's also too dense, again IMHO, to realise that the more he uses large fonts to emphasise his message, the less credibility he has.
(Yes, for those who want to point out my excessive use of the bold font in the quote above, on this occasion I've emulated aarable's posting style. You'll just have to work out whether I'm being ironic or not.
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