High Ground (1853); Kolo (1851); Table d'hote (1779); Kraut,Pfefferkuchen (1617)

[Fred Shapiro]

On Wed, 8 May 2002 Bapopik at AOL.COM wrote:

>    There's been no New York Times correction on Daniel Burnham's :"Make no
> little plans."  I told the Times to contact Fred Shapiro--did they even do
> that?  What is the editorial standard with dead people--you can freely
> misspell the name, and misdate and misquote a person's words?  And did
> Burnham even say it, as BARTLETT'S questions?

No, the Times hasn't contacted me, but thanks for the plug.  The history
of this quotation is a complex one.  Burnham did apparently say some of
the quotation, then it was embellished on Christmas cards by an associate
of Burnham's to its current form.  The embellished version may be based on
authentic oral statements by Burnham.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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