Fact-Checking
Proving a saying has been misattributed is tricky business.
It is not enough to show that the quote is out of keeping with the character, worldview, or style, though these are often telltale signs of misattribution.
Confidence in these matters requires two things:
An exhaustive knowledge of the person’s writing and speaking.
Proving a correct attribution only requires reference to a single piece of evidence where the author or speaker published the words or is reported to have uttered them (assuming that the report or publication is reliable).
Proving misattribution requires some degree of certainty that one hasn’t missed an archive somewhere, or (even more challenging), that the researcher knows all that the person might have said, including in private.1
Ascertaining whether others said/wrote the passage in question first.2
Further, quotations attributed to non-English speakers are particularly thorny to verify for English-only researchers. That is probably why so many of these misattributed quotations can proliferate, e.g., Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s supposed saying that “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”3
In fact, I came across one recently that I was convinced must be fake.
This saying often gets attributed to Confucius (as the Clinton Foundation does here) but it’s hard to find a paper trail for it going back very far, and it feels like such sentimental, West Wingy advice that surely it must have come from Pinterest, not 5th century China!
But it really is an ancient Chinese proverb. On a forum, someone tipped me off to the fact that it might actually be from Guan Zhong, a Chinese statesman who lived some centuries before Confucius. Verifying the claim was a bear, though. There are not many translations of the Guanzi available in English. Fortunately, Internet Archive had one, and by running a couple keywords through the search, I was eventually able to find it:
"When planning for one year, there is nothing better than planting grain. When planning for ten years, there is nothing better than planting trees. When planning for a lifetime, there is nothing better than planting men." — Guanzi, Quan Xiu 10.5
A couple things to note here:
I was initially unable to find it by searching “rice” because the English was translated as “grain.” This is always the challenge of trying to keyword verify quotes in translation.
The English translation in the book was closer to the Chinese structure (“plant rice,” “plant trees,” “plant people,”) than the version quoted most often in other sources (“plant rice,” “plant trees,” “educate people.” The pop version narrows the scope and ruins the symmetry, in my opinion!
The introduction to that chapter of the Guanzi suggests that it was written several centuries after Guan Zhong, so attributing it to him might be a stretch (though we often allow traditionally-held authorship to suffice in cases like this).
The introduction also notes the Confucian themes of that chapter, so misattribution to Confucius makes a certain sense (if nevertheless inaccurate).
Writing/Speaking
“The American People Deserve A Leader Who Will Fix the Debt” (Daily Caller)
“Instead, we have to choose between the candidate who promises not to do anything about the problem and the candidate who promises to make it far worse. Another President Calvin Coolidge, the last president to leave office with less debt than when he started, is nowhere to be seen.”
Radio Interview: “VP Harris and Her $35 Trillion Debt” (Steve Gruber Show)
SoConCon Panel on In Vitro Fertilization (Photo)
Seminar for Dominion Christian on Faith and Law
Q&A on Federal Reserve’s Basel Endgame Rule (Brookings)
In The News
“Activist Lila Rose Under Fire for Suggesting Trump Hasn’t Earned Pro-Life Vote” (Christianity Today)
I believe this is the first time Mrs. Shelton and I have both appeared in the same article.
“Christians Must Consider Moral Hazards of IVF” (Daily Citizen)
“Steel Strategy Stinks” (National Review)
On the rumored Biden-Harris blockade of U.S. Steel’s Acquisition by Nippon Steel. The admin has backed off since—no doubt from these fierce salvos! 😂
“Pence-Founded Group Makes Case for NATO Amid Some GOP Skepticism” (The Hill)
E.g., there is no contemporaneous record that Karl Barth said “to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” The first attribution we find for this comes about a decade after Barth’s death. However, there are thematically similar passages in his unpublished Church Dogmatics IV.4. Further, the decade-late attribution comes from someone who knew Barth, so it is plausible that he said it, or something very similar.
E.g., in 2016, Hilary Clinton said, “America is great because America is good,” but it would be wrong to attribute the saying to her (even though she said it without attribution in her speech). Equally wrong, however, would be to attribute it to Tocqueville. As best as anyone can tell, a version of this does traces back to an 1835 book, but not Democracy in America (published that same year). Rather, in A Narrative of the Visit to the American Churches, two British ministers wrote: “America will be great if America is good. If not, her greatness will vanish away like a morning cloud.”