30 August 2011
A New York Times op-ed on the subject.
I would go one step further than Mr. Morton, who wrote the NYT piece. The tendency is not limited to bumper stickers, coffee mugs, and t-shirts. Whenever you see a quote attributed to a famous person that is not accompanied by a reference to the date and specific speech or book/article in which it appears, assume that someone made it up and assigned the famous person’s name to it. The assumption will be right more often than it will be wrong.
I believe I’ve mentioned the site before, but The Quote Investigator is an excellent resource.
