Attributing Quotes & Sayings

If Stalin was such a bad guy, why do all these people have to resort to attributing to him almost entirely quotes he didn't make, or manipulate his actual quotes just enough to make them seem evil? — Joseph Stalin

When faced with choosing between attributing their pain to "being crazy" and having had abusive parents, clients will choose "crazy" most of the time. Dora, a 38-year-old, was profoundly abused by multiple family perpetrators and has grappled with cutting and eating disordered behaviors for most of her life. She poignantly echoed this dilemma in her therapy:
I hate it when we talk about my family as "dysfunctional" or "abusive." Think about what you are asking me to accept - that my parents didn't love me, care about me, or protect me. If I have to choose between "being abused" or "being sick and crazy," it's less painful to see myself as nuts than to imagine my parents as evil. — Lisa Ferentz

It is amazing how many people think that they can answer an argument by attributing bad motives to those who disagree with them. Using this kind of reasoning, you can believe or not believe anything about anything, without having to bother to deal with facts or logic. — Thomas Sowell

Meanwhile, the travellers pursued their journey; Emily making frequent efforts to appear cheerful, and too often relapsing into silence and dejection. Madame Cheron, attributing her melancholy solely to the circumstance of her being removed to a distance from her lover, and believing, that the sorrow, which her niece still expressed for the loss of St. Aubert, proceeded partly from an affectation of sensibility, endeavoured to make it appear ridiculous to her, that such deep regret should continue to be felt so long after the period usually allowed for grief. At — Eliza Parsons

the fundamental attribution error is the tendency of human beings to attribute the negative or frustrating behaviors of their colleagues to their intentions and personalities, while attributing their own negative or frustrating behaviors to environmental factors. — Patrick Lencioni

If the history of science teaches us anything, it is that what conquers our ignorance is research, not giving up and attributing our ignorance to the miraculous work of a creator. — Jerry A. Coyne

The great error of physicians has been that of attributing recovery to the operations of their poisons, while they have left out of account the healing powers of the body itself. — Herbert M. Shelton

I had gradually come, by this time [1839-01], to see that the Old Testament from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc. and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos, or the beliefs of any barbarian. — Charles Darwin

In this book it is spoken of the Sephiroth and the Paths; of Spirits and Conjurations; of Gods, Spheres, Planes, and many other things which may or may not exist. It is immaterial whether these exist or not. By doing certain things certain results will follow; students are most earnestly warned against attributing objective reality or philosophic validity to any of them. — Aleister Crowley

There was something superficial in attributing anything so awful as the Great Depression to anything so insubstantial as speculation in common stocks. — John Kenneth Galbraith

The ears of our generation have been made so delicate by the senseless multitude of flatterers that, as soon as we perceive that anything of ours is not approved of, we cry out that we are being bitterly assailed; and when we can repel the truth by no other pretence, we escape by attributing bitterness, impatience, intemperance, to our adversaries. — Martin Luther

Liberals have been driven to the desperate expedient of attributing ... social pathology in today's ghettos to 'a legacy of slavery' even though black children grew up with two parents more often under slavery than today. — Thomas Sowell

The cult of individuals is always, in my view, unjustified. To be sure, nature distributes her gifts unevenly among her children. But there are plenty of the well-endowed, thank God, and I am firmly convinced that most of them live quiet, unobtrusive lives. It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few of them for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular estimate of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque. — Albert Einstein

What struck me whenever I visited a farm was how much more sophisticated was the life the animals were capable of living than was assumed by those exploiting them. The more we are willing to see about their lives, the more we will see. Humans seem to take perverse pleasure in attributing stupidity to animals when it is almost always entirely a question of human ignorance. — Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

according to a brief perusal of women writer's comments online over the past few days, men are: overly confident, predatory, helpless, psychopaths, terrified of women, fascists, the reason why the world is in this mess, literally so stupid, and the problem here. Of course what these women really mean is that they themselves are not overly confident, not predatory, not helpless, and on down the line. It's just easier to say that men are these things, than that you are not these things. People would rightly become suspicious if you suddenly started going on about how amazing you were. They'd start looking for proof you weren't. But by attributing these negative behaviors and traits to your "opposite" group, it's an easy, criticism-proof way of saying, "I would never behave like this, I would never be like this." And — Jessa Crispin

Man usually avoids attributing cleverness to somebody else- unless it is an enemy — Albert Einstein

Existentialism, in both its Continental and its Anglo-Saxon versions, is an attempt to solve the problem without really facing it: to solve it by attributing to the individual an empty, lonely freedom, a freedom, if he wishes, to 'fly in the face of the facts'. What it pictures is indeed the fearful solitude of the individual marooned upon a tiny island in the middle of a sea of scientific facts, and morality escaping from science only by a wild leap of the will. But our situation is not like this. — Iris Murdoch

Many bodybuilders sell themselves short. Erroneously attributing their lack of satisfactory progress to a poverty of the requisite genetic traits, instead of to their irrational training and dietary practices, they give up training. Don't make the same mistake — Mike Mentzer

The deepest change begins with men raising children as much as women do and women being equal actors in the world outside the home. There are many ways of supporting that, from something as simple as paid sick leave and flexible work hours to attributing an economic value to all caregiving and making that amount tax deductible. — Gloria Steinem

It is a sad twist of irony that those who claim to be most focused on the Holy Spirit are in actuality the ones doing the most to abuse, grieve, insult, misrepresent, quench, and dishonor Him. How do they do it? By attributing to Him words He did not say, deeds He did not do, phenomena He did not produce, and experiences that have nothing to do with Him. They boldly plaster His name on that which is not His work. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

You think too much, Pearl. It's your most irritating flaw, and, let us be honest, given the severity and sheer volume of your flaws, that is saying something. Since this seems to be a time for advice, I suggest you stop thinking entirely.' 'And how might I achieve that? Follow your lead, perhaps?' 'I think neither too much nor too little. I am perfectly balanced - this is what you find so attractive. As a capemoth is drawn to fire.' 'So I am in danger of being burned up?' 'To a blackened, shrivelled crust.' 'So, you're pushing me away for my own good. A gesture of compassion, then.' 'Fires neither push nor pull. They simply exist, compassionless, indifferent to the suicidal urges of flitting bugs. That is another one of your flaws, Pearl. Attributing emotion where none exists.' 'I could have sworn there was emotion, two nights past - ' 'Oh, fire burns eagerly when there's fuel - ' 'And in the morning there's naught but cold ashes. — Steven Erikson

Autonomy is the capacity to act on principles that are one's own and one will exercise this capacity by means of a process of rational reflection on these principles. Autonomy is thought to be necessary for attributing political responsibility. — Alison Assiter

I have no skills with machines. I fear them, and because I cannot help attributing human qualities to them, I suspect that they hate me and will kill me if they can. — Robertson Davies

What do you do when you are faced with several different gods each claiming the same territory? The Babylonian Marduk and the Greek Zeus was each considered master of the sky and king of gods. You might also decide, since they had quite different attributes, that one of them was merely invented by the priests. But if one, why not both? And so it was that the great idea arose, the realization that there might be a way to know the world without the god hypothesis; that there might be principles, forces, laws of nature, through which the world could be understood without attributing the fall of every sparrow to the direct intervention of Zeus. — Carl Sagan

An established government has an infinite advantage, by that very circumstance of its being established
the bulk of mankind being governed by authority, not reason, and never attributing authority to anything that has not the recommendation of antiquity. — David Hume

Notice, for instance, that Galileo does not pull out the old Aristotelian reductio and conclude from the paradoxical behavior of infinite sets that (infinity) can't be reasoned about. Instead, he manages somewhat to anticipate both Kant (by attributing (Infinity)-paradoxes to the hardwired constraints of 'finite minds' rather than to any extramental reality) and Cantor (by using one-to-one correspondence as a comparative measure of sets, by arguing that infinite quantities obey a different sort of arithmetic than do finite quantities, etc.) — David Foster Wallace

Whenever and wherever men have engaged in the mindless slaughter of animals (including other men), they have often attempted to justify their acts by attributing the most vicious or revolting qualities to those they would destory; and the less reason there is for the slaughter, the greater the campaign for vilification. — Farley Mowat

A mode of thought does not become 'critical' simply by attributing that label to itself, but by virtue of its content. — Alan Sokal

We often feel that we lack something, and seem to see that very quality in someone else, promptly attributing all our own qualities to him too, and a kind of ideal contentment as well. And so the happy mortal is a model of complete perfection
which we have ourselves created. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Those who fail in everyday affairs show a tendency to reach out for the impossible. It is a device to camouflage their shortcomings. For when we fail in attempting the possible, the blame is solely ours; but when we fail in attempting the impossible, we are justified in attributing it to the magnitude of the task. There is less risk in being discredited when trying the impossible than when trying the possible. It is thus that failure in everyday affairs often breeds an extravagant audacity. One — Eric Hoffer

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will - his personal responsibility in the realm of faith and morals. — Albert Schweitzer

I spoke of the tragic illusion of perpetuity, but, no, my friends, it is a comic one. The ludicrous plot in which we are all trapped. The ancient Greeks referred to plot as mythos, attributing the random drift of human affairs to some sort of unknowable but glimpsable divine motion, attempting to attach a certain grandeur to it, the delusion of meaning. But we are characters who do not exist, in a story composed by no one from nothing. Can anything be more pitiable? No wonder we all are grieving. — Robert Coover

Learn to look without imagination, to listen without distortion: that is all. Stop attributing names and shapes to the essentially nameless and formless, realize that every mode of perception is subjective, that what is seen or heard, touched or smelled, felt or thought, expected or imagined, is in the mind and not in reality, and you will experience peace and freedom from fear. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

But how can we venture to reprove or praise the universe! Let us beware of attributing to it heartlessness and unreason or their opposites: it is neither perfect nor beautiful nor noble, and has no desire to become any of these; it is by no means striving to imitate mankind! It is quite impervious to all our aesthetic and moral judgments! It has likewise no impulse to self-preservation or impulses of any kind; neither does it know any laws. Let us beware of saying there are laws in nature. There are only necessities: there is no one to command, no one to obey, no one to transgress ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

For the will, as that which is common to all, is for that reason also common: consequently, every vehement emergence of will is common, i.e. it demeans us to a mere exemplar of the species.
He, who on the other hand. who wants to be altogether uncommon, that is to say great, must never let a preponderant agitation of will take his consciousness altogether, however much he is urged to do so.
He must, e.g., be able to take note of the odious opinion of another without feeling his own aroused by it: indeed, there is no surer sign of greatness than ignoring hurtful or insulting expressions by attributing them without further ado, like countless other errors, to the speaker's lack of knowledge and thus merely taking note of them without feeling them. — Arthur Schopenhauer

To me, then, true criticism consists in trying to find out the intrinsic worth of the thing itself, and not in attributing a quality to that thing. You attribute a quality to an environment, to an experience, only when you want to derive something from it, when you want to gain or to have power or happiness. Now this destroys true criticism. Your desire is perverted through attributing values, and therefore you cannot see clearly. Instead of trying to see the flower in its original and entire beauty, you look at it through coloured glasses, and therefore you can never see it as it is. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

In the sense of attributing to the claimant a prognostic view of his present ailments, freedom has always been of the oppressed. — Ashfaq Saraf

We find or invent the cleverest means of attributing our sins to anything or anyone outside of ourselves. — Paul Washer

In the current environment, attributing low student performance to teacher tenure is one of the great unproven causal links out there. The relationship just hasn't been examined very carefully, but we should all recognize that in higher education the strongest institutions generally have the most robust tenure systems, and in elementary and secondary, the states with the strongest teacher unions (and tenure systems) tend to have the highest student performance. — Nicholas Lemann

The universe shudders in horror that we have this infinitely valuable, infinitely deep, infinitely rich, infinitely wise, infinitely loving God, and instead of pursuing him with steadfast passion and enthralled fury - instead of loving him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength; instead of attributing to him glory and honor and praise and power and wisdom and strength - we just try to take his toys and run. It is still idolatry to want God for his benefits but not for himself. — Matt Chandler

There are significant relationships, of course, between wanting things and caring about them..The notion of caring is in large part constructed out of the notion of desire. Caring about something may be, in the end, nothing more than a certain complex mode of wanting it. However, simply attributing desire to a person does not in itself convey that the person cares about the object he desires. — Harry G. Frankfurt

There's nothing so ill advised as attributing a metonymic value to inanimate objects. — Valeria Luiselli

As a kid, I wanted to be a boy because I equated that with strength. There's a problem with that. It's only growing into my own womanhood that I realize how warped that is that I was attributing strength to male qualities. — Tatiana Maslany

In a broader sense, the value of heirlooms is always, as I have said, an historical value, derived from acts of production, use, or appropriation that have involved the object in the past. The value of an heirloom is really that of actions: actions whose significance has been, as it were, absorbed into the object's current identity - whether the emphasis is placed on the inspired labors of the artist who created it, the lengths to which some people have been known to go to acquire it, or the fact that it was once used to cut off a mythical giant's head. Since the value of the actions has already been fixed in the physical being of the object, it is perhaps a short leap to begin attributing the agency behind such actions to the object as well, and speak, as Mauss does, of valuables that transfer themselves from owner to owner or actively influence their owners' fates. The — David Graeber

It's dangerous to start attributing your fortunes to luck and your misfortunes to fate. — Nancy Pickard

Kindness steers no easy course. Attributing it to character, we seldom recognize the secret efforts of a noble heart, whereas we reward really wicked people for the evil they refrain from committing. — Honore De Balzac

Attributing to another author, Writing a novel is like setting a goal and walking there in your sleep. — Karl Ove Knausgard

When someone is in some kind of social or psychological difficulty, and someone has been irresponsible in some way, we wonder what caused the problem: "Why are they like that?" And instead of attributing the problem to the person, our psychologists tend to refer it back to other things and other people: It was because of their environment, or because of family conditioning, or because of their father and mother. But there is no end to that, because you can take the blame straight back to Adam and Eve! And responsibility is evaded, because it was limited in the first place. — Alan W. Watts

We degrade Providence too much by attributing our ideas to it out of annoyance at being unable to understand it. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

But the narrator is inclined to think that by attributing overimportance to praiseworthy actions one may, by implication, be paying indirect but potent homage to the worse side of human nature. For this attitude implies that such actions shine out as rare exceptions, while callousness and apathy are the general rule. The narrator does not share that view. — Albert Camus

A responsible person accepts the results of his choices, attributing blame or praise to himself; that is what makes you happy with the way you turned out. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

The fallacy that Morley in his life of Gladstone asserts to be the greatest affliction of politicians; it is indeed a common plague of humanity. It is:
The fallacy of attributing to one cause what is due to many causes. — Alfred Korzybski

I suppose that people, using themselves and each other so much by words, are at least consistent in attributing wisdom to a still tongue ... — William Faulkner

But such a general yearning could not be explained except by attributing the cause of it to the historical training through which the individual Austrian Germans had passed. — Adolf Hitler

I know that a lot of our successes came because we had pure intentions and great talent, and we did a lot of things right, but I also believe that attributing our successes solely to our own intelligence, without acknowledging the role of accidental events, diminishes us. We must acknowledge the random events that went our way, because acknowledging our good fortune - and not telling ourselves that everything we did was some stroke of genius - lets us make more realistic assessments and decisions. The existence of luck also reminds us that our activities are less repeatable. Since change is inevitable, the question is: Do you act to stop it and try to protect yourself from it, or do you become the master of change by accepting it and being open to it? My view, of course, is that working with change is what creativity is about. — Ed Catmull

The Government is making a fool of itself by attributing all terrorism and acts against the government only to one single patriot — Carlos Marighella

[An example of misattribution:]

If you don't know the source of a quote,
you can always make it sound better by attributing it to me.

- Mark Twain — Jakub Marian

[Attributing the origin of life to spontaneous generation.] However improbable we regard this event, it will almost certainly happen at least once ... The time ... is of the order of two billion years ... Given so much time, the "impossible" becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One only has to wait: time itself performs the miracles. — George Wald

In opposition to the absolutely and directly false Heideggerian theses attributing to Aquinas an onto-theo-logical metaphysics of Being, Aquinas's actual and genuine conception of God is articulated in the famous formulation according to which God is ipsum esse per se subsistens, Being itself subsisting through itself.

God is not a being (ens,) among other beings, thus not anything like the highest, first, or maximal being.

(p. 43) — Lorenz B. Puntel

It's really a pity that there are observers who view political events like comic strips. There has to be a Zorro, there has to be a star. No, the problem of Upper Volta is more serious than that. It was a grave mistake to have looked for a man, a star, at all costs, to the point of creating one, that is, to the point of attributing the ownership of the event to captain Sankara, who must have been the brains, etc. — Thomas Sankara

For, under such an administration, every one would feel that he possessed all the fullness, as well as all the responsibility of his existence. So long as personal safety was ensured, so long as labor was free, and the fruits of labor secured against all unjust attacks, no one would have any difficulties to contend with in the State. When prosperous, we should not, it is true, have to thank the State for our success; but when unfortunate, we should no more think of taxing it with our disasters, than our peasants think of attributing to it the arrival of hail or of frost. We should know it only by the inestimable blessing of Safety. — Frederic Bastiat

It consisted essentially in a dialectical gymnastics which gave the symbol of speech, the word, an absolute meaning, so that words came in the end to have a substantiality with which the ancients could invest their Logos only by attributing to it a mystical value. The great achievement of scholasticism was that it laid the foundations of a solidly built intellectual function, the sine qua non of modern science and technology. — C. G. Jung