spurious Lincoln quotes

Garson O'Toole adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM
Mon Feb 15 15:58:50 UTC 2010


Here is an antedating by a single day of the famous quote attributed
to Lincoln. The speaker is identified as "Mr. Wheeler" and he is
probably the Chairman of the Prohibitionist Party Convention, Fred F.
Wheeler.

Citation: 1887 August 26, New York Times, Conscience in Politics, The
Prohibition Party State Convention, Page 5, Column 2 (about 6
paragraphs down).

As I sat in the gallery noting the care and eagerness and anxiety of
the leaders to secure its passage I could not help but think of that
trite remark of Abraham Lincoln: 'You can fool all of the people, some
of the time. You can fool some of the people all of the time; but you
can't fool all of the people all of the time.' [Applause.]

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C02E6DE1530E633A25755C2A96E9C94669FD7CF

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 9:52 AM, Garson O'Toole
<adsgarsonotoole at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Garson O'Toole <adsgarsonotoole at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Re: spurious Lincoln quotes
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> James A. Landau wrote
>> Subject:      spurious Lincoln quotes
>> from Netscape News
>> http://channels.isp.netscape.com/whatsnew/package.jsp?name=fte/lincoln/lincoln&floc=NI-slot1a
>> Exposed! Lincoln Never Said THIS
> ...
>>
>> So where did these quotes come from, if not from President Lincoln?
>>
>> "You can fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time."
>>
>> This was thought to be part of a speech Lincoln gave in September 1858 in Clinton, Illinois, but the line is not included in the text that was printed in the local newspaper. It was attributed to Lincoln in 1910 when two people remembered hearing him say it in 1856--54 years later.
>>
>
> The Yale Book of Quotations has an earlier, 1887, attribution to
> Lincoln for this quote. The context can be examined via the freely
> accessible portion of the New York Times archive. YBQ also has a great
> citation to Denis Diderot in 1754.
>
> Citation: 1887 August 27, New York Times, The Prohibition Convention.
>
> The vital fact which this convention establishes is that the
> Prohibitionists cannot be fooled. Chairman WHEELER explicitly set
> forth that fact in his speech on Thursday, when he quoted most aptly
> LINCOLN'S remark that "you can fool all of the people "you can fool
> all of the people some of the time; and you can fool  some of the
> people all of the time, but you can't fool all the people all of the
> time."
>
> http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9F04E4DE1530E633A25754C2A96E9C94669FD7CF
>
> Garson
>
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>

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