[Ads-l] An apocryphal quote that we don't need to wait for a QI column to debunk

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Sun Jul 21 19:57:15 UTC 2024


In a column in today’s NYT, Nicholas Kristof writes:

What a week! It feels like August 1914, a fulcrum in the sweep of events. These days may have moved the arc of America and the world, with history lurching in competing directions in ways that may shape our course for decades.
“There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen,” Lenin is widely quoted as saying. In fact, he probably didn’t say it <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/07/13/decades-weeks/>; please excuse my effort at fact-checking as a token pushback to our Leninist dialectic of exaggerations, deceptions and conspiracy theories that were all highlighted this week.
I read that in the hard copy that comes to our door, and was all set to ask Garson about the line (which I’ve since heard repeated in an MSNBC interview with presidential historian Jon Meacham after Biden’s withdrawal from the race—sorry for the lack of a spoiler alert if anyone hasn’t been checking their phone or other news sources) but when I turn to the online version of the column to provide the link I see that Kristof, and Garson, already beat me to the punch:

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2020/07/13/decades-weeks/
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