I recently pushed an author to do better with the epigraphs he was using at the beginning of his chapters. Some I couldn’t verify—although I have a sixth sense about veracity, I’ll give any quote the benefit of the doubt until I prove it false—but a few of them were, in fact, well-known fakes.
How does this—a fake quote—happen? A lot of times, it’s like a decades long game of Telephone perpetuated by the Internet. But in this article about a fake Harriet Tubman quote, we learn:
Harriet Tubman’s story has from the beginning been a malleable icon who has been made to say what various groups wanted her to say.
As Jean Humez shows in her book, Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories, this began with the very first abolitionists, who were responsible both for recording the illiterate Tubman’s own narratives and for crafting the first biographies. Those biographies are invaluable points of access into Tubman’s life and thought. But, Tubman scholars now agree, they also contained a variety of embellishments that served abolitionists’ purposes. Over time some of those embellishments (like the idea that Tubman took 19 trips back to the South and freed 300 people) became settled facts in collective memory, enshrined in children’s books and other scholarly texts as Tubman’s actual story receded from view.
Although I blame the Internet, it’s surprisingly easy to use it to test for truth, and I recommend these websites to you when you need to start checking quotes:
Bartleby Quotations
The Big Apple (An Etymological Dictionary)
Fake Buddha Quotes
Quote/Counterquote
Quote Investigator
Quotenik
Spurious Jefferson Quotations
Twain Quotes
If you know of other reliable websites that have been helpful in your research, please leave me a comment.
Related posts:
No, You May Not Use Brainyquote as Your Source
The Internet Can Be Unreliable
Someone Is Wrong on the Internet!
Falser Words Were Never Spoken
Tweet: Watch those quotes! There’s a lot of fakes out there.
Tweet: I’ll give any quote the benefit of the doubt until I prove it false. 🙂
Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”