Quashed again: We make a living by what we get...

Channeling Sir Winston Churchill today...

I don't know about anyone else but I'm having fun quashing these memes! 

This is a meme I see all the time. And there is nothing wrong with the sentiment. But there is everything wrong with the attribution. Churchill is probably turning over in his grave at all the words being put into his mouth. 

There is no evidence that Churchill ever said it. But this quote pops up regularly in places like BrainyQuote and GoodReads (it also pops up in sloppily researched and poorly fact checked books).

If the quote is on those websites it must be true!! No. When I first saw this quote I was sure it was not Churchillian. So I started going through books by/about Churchill. Could not find it anywhere. I asked librarians and they could not find this quote in any of Churchill's works. 

That's because it most likely is not in any of his works. As Richard Langworth on his website "Next to the var­i­ous “suc­cess” quotes, one of the most pop­u­lar Churchill mis­quo­ta­tions that bedi­zen the Inter­net is: “You make a liv­ing by what you get; you make a life by what you give.”

This cropped up in sev­eral poorly researched Churchill quote books and was taken up in a 2005 TV ad by Lock­heed Mar­tin. No one ever lists a ref­er­ence, because there is none: It can­not be tracked to Churchill and is an old saw put in his mouth to make it more inter­est­ing. Listed with other “red her­rings” in Churchill By Him­self."

The Churchill Centre says "While often attributed to Churchill, a search of over 2.5 million words by and about Churchill in The Churchill Centre's research database fails to show that Churchill ever spoke or wrote those words.  Equally encouraging, perhaps, are words he DID utter in Dundee, Scotland, on 10 October 1908: 

"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone?  How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal?  And I avow my faith that we are marching towards better days.  Humanity will not be cast down.  We are going on swinging bravely forward along the grand high road and already behind the distant mountains is the promise of the sun."

If someone wants to quote Winston Churchill, why not open one of his books and quote directly from his works? Quoting a misattributed quote is easy to do. Doing a little research to check the veracity of the quote (is it quoted correctly? is it attributed correctly?) is a little more time consuming but it will make you seem a whole lot smarter and, well, a little bit nerdy. Just say No! to incorrect memes and do your part to smarten up this world a little bit more.

Blog posts © copyrighted 2015 Julie Patrick Clark