Ghost-Written Famous Quotations

[David A. Daniel]

>there is a first level of popular attribution, a second
>level of some quotation dictionaries giving a better origin, then a third
>level debunking the second-level debunkers


In his 1977 book "The Power of Positive Nonsense" (McGraw-Hill) Leo Rosten
attributes the phrase to himself in 1939. What level of misattribution
debunkery would that be? But seriously folks... Perhaps 38 years after the
fact Rosten misremembered either the date or the non-originality of the
line?
DAD

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of
Fred Shapiro
Sent: Saturday, June 30, 2007 9:36 AM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Ghost-Written Famous Quotations

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007, David A. Daniel wrote:

> I don't know (a) if this is the sort of thing you are looking for, or (b)
> old hat, but there is the famous "Anyone who hates dogs and babies can't
be
> all bad", usually attributed to W.C. Fields but actually said by Leo
Rosten
> about Fields at a Masquers' Club roast in Field's honor.

In this query I was looking for famous quotations actually coined by
speechwriters and the like, rather than other types of misattributions.

Note that the Yale Book of Quotations documents Bryan Darnton saying "No
man who hates dogs and children can be all bad" in 1937, prior to the Leo
Rosten usage.  This is an example of a common situation in quotation
scholarship, where there is a first level of popular attribution, a second
level of some quotation dictionaries giving a better origin, then a third
level debunking the second-level debunkers.  The Yale Book of Quotations
and Ralph Keyes's books and the efforts of some of the people on ADS-L are
the only sources that make it to the third level to any appreciable
extent. Sometimes Nigel Rees's publications make it there.

Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Collections and     YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS
   Access and Lecturer in Legal Research     Yale University Press
Yale Law School                             ISBN 0300107986
e-mail: fred.shapiro at yale.edu               http://quotationdictionary.com
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