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| Maya Angelou’s misquoted stamp - and other famous lines we all get wrong | Maya Angelou’s misquoted stamp - and other famous lines we all get wrong |
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| Never apologise, never explain. That more or less sums up the US postal service’s attitude this week. On Tuesday it issued a stamp in honour of the American author Maya Angelou, who died last year. Next to a photograph of Angelou is a famous quote from her: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” How sweet. There’s just one problem: she never said it. | Never apologise, never explain. That more or less sums up the US postal service’s attitude this week. On Tuesday it issued a stamp in honour of the American author Maya Angelou, who died last year. Next to a photograph of Angelou is a famous quote from her: “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” How sweet. There’s just one problem: she never said it. |
| The quote actually comes from a poem published in 1967 by children’s writer Joan Walsh Anglund. The fault may lie with President Obama, who attributed the line to Angelou in an address last year. The US postal service initially defended using the quote, arguing it was associated with Angelou. Now it is reluctantly backtracking. But there is no suggestion the stamp will be withdrawn. | The quote actually comes from a poem published in 1967 by children’s writer Joan Walsh Anglund. The fault may lie with President Obama, who attributed the line to Angelou in an address last year. The US postal service initially defended using the quote, arguing it was associated with Angelou. Now it is reluctantly backtracking. But there is no suggestion the stamp will be withdrawn. |
| The internet, along with Obama, is probably the culprit. Some minor postal official will have seen the president’s attribution, echoed on myriad websites, and taken that as gospel. Quotes, like facts, are now more slippery than ever. Take the aphorism with which I began: “Never apologise, never explain.” Some online sources attribute this to the 1949 John Wayne film She Wore A Yellow Ribbon (what Wayne actually said in that film was “Never apologise, mister – it’s a sign of weakness”), but its antecedents are murky. Possible originators include Disraeli (“Never complain and never explain”), Benjamin Jowett (“Never regret, never explain, never apologise”), and Admiral Jacky Fisher (“Never contradict. Never explain. Never apologise”). The net offers plausible support for all three, along with Churchill and Wallis Simpson. | |
| Related: Not my words: John Green's wrongly attributed line and other misquotes | Related: Not my words: John Green's wrongly attributed line and other misquotes |
| There are numerous other examples of misattributions. The quote that defines Voltaire – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – was invented by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall. Poor Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake”; that was made up by Rousseau. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” is usually attributed to Burke, but there is no evidence he ever said it. John Stuart Mill said something similar, but I prefer the commenter on one website who mischievously attributes it to Marilyn Monroe. He says she also coined: “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” I like to think he may be mocking the anarchy of the online world. | There are numerous other examples of misattributions. The quote that defines Voltaire – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – was invented by his biographer Evelyn Beatrice Hall. Poor Marie Antoinette never said “Let them eat cake”; that was made up by Rousseau. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” is usually attributed to Burke, but there is no evidence he ever said it. John Stuart Mill said something similar, but I prefer the commenter on one website who mischievously attributes it to Marilyn Monroe. He says she also coined: “Life’s a bitch and then you die.” I like to think he may be mocking the anarchy of the online world. |
| According to a New Yorker review of the Yale Book of Quotations, “Life’s a bitch and then you die” was first used in the Washington Post in 1982. But that sounds too late. The American writer Langston Hughes proclaimed “Life’s a bitch” in 1940, but it’s not clear who added the suffix – or when. Some sites unhelpfully label the quote proverbial; others suggest it is a translation from the Chinese, which seems unlikely. The New Yorker article usefully directs us to a book called The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where and When by Ralph Keyes. I am ordering it NOW! Sadly the book will arrive too late for this article, and everything written here has been culled from the internet, so treat it with a large pinch of salt. In fact, it might just be safer to attribute everything to Marilyn Monroe. | According to a New Yorker review of the Yale Book of Quotations, “Life’s a bitch and then you die” was first used in the Washington Post in 1982. But that sounds too late. The American writer Langston Hughes proclaimed “Life’s a bitch” in 1940, but it’s not clear who added the suffix – or when. Some sites unhelpfully label the quote proverbial; others suggest it is a translation from the Chinese, which seems unlikely. The New Yorker article usefully directs us to a book called The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where and When by Ralph Keyes. I am ordering it NOW! Sadly the book will arrive too late for this article, and everything written here has been culled from the internet, so treat it with a large pinch of salt. In fact, it might just be safer to attribute everything to Marilyn Monroe. |
| • This article was amended on 9 April 2015. An earlier version said the Maya Angelou stamp “is part of a series called ‘Forever’ memorialising great people and events”. To clarify: “Forever” stamps are, in the words of the US Postal Service, “non-denominational first-class postage, which means that they can be used to mail first-class letters no matter what the postal rate”. It was further amended on 10 April 2015 to add what John Wayne actually said in the film She Wore A Yellow Ribbon. |