A Commonplace Book

Ever since the Devil quoted Scripture, citation from authority has been a terrain of struggle. (Just ask any Marxist.)

There are basically three kinds of Wrongly Attributed Statements. WAS I is an adaptation or composite of a statement or statements from someone or several people, who may or may not be famous. WAS II is a statement that was uttered, as is, by someone, often not famous, that has come to be widely attributed to someone else, invariably more famous. WAS III was never uttered by anyone, at least not that we know of. WAS III is not to be confused with those anonymous sayings you find in Bartlett's. WAS III is an apercu of metaphysically uncertain status--the witticism that wasn't--hanging somewhere between ether and air, quoted but never attributed (at least not credibly) to anyone, not even to Anonymous.