As an Amazon Prime subscriber, you gain access to a free Kindle book every month. Since I’m a big “read before bedtime” kind of gal, I always download a book. One time, it was, “Hemingway Didn’t Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations” by Garson O’Toole. Wow. It opened my eyes to the millions of quotes we’ve falsely attributed to folks such as Thomas Edison, Pablo Picasso, Eleanor Roosevelt and even Martin Luther King, Jr. The author found most of the errors are simply ‘being human.’ One person messed up attribution due to inaccurate fact checking and it stuck ever since. For decades! And then Presidents, movie stars or well-meaning journalists take that quote and use it in a speech, or Instagram post, and it solidifies the error.
The one I was most surprised by? This quote by Charles Darwin, “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals.” O’Toole dug into this quote and learned Darwin never wrote, or said, this. He concluded one or more of the authors of the history text, Civilization Past and Present -- even the person who wrote the forward to that textbook – constructed the quotation. It was a part of a description of Darwin’s ideas. Someone misconstrued it to be exact Darwin verbiage. He never actually said those words within On the Origin of the Species, where that quote is most attributed to. Fascinating.
I love quotes and now, like you, I’m going to make sure the person I attribute a ‘famous’ quote to did, in fact, say it. Before you run it – look online at http://QuoteInvestigator.Com
Below are a few quotes I’ve collected from fellow hunters, outdoorsmen and women, and conservationists over the years. Hope you enjoy.
“Hunt when you can, you’re gonna run outta health before you run outta money!”
“Conservation requires commitment to do what we can to make these places better.”
Both from Randy Newberg, host of “Leupold’s Fresh Tracks with Randy Newberg” available on YouTube and Amazon Prime.
“Bowhunting is a conscious decision to make the hunt harder than it needs to be,” Tom Miranda, host of “Adventure Bowhunter with Tom Miranda Presented by Mathews” and “Territories Wild with Tom Miranda Presented by Mathews” both airing on Outdoor Channel.
"Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get,” Dale Carnegie. Shared by Melissa Bachman, host of “Winchester Deadly Passion” airing on Sportsman Channel. If Bachman decides to write a book on success, I would be the first to buy it.
“To live a creative life, you must lose your fear of being wrong,” quote from Joseph Chilton Pearce and shared with us by Jules McQueen, TV host and conservationist, as her ‘words to live by.’
“If your duck or deer tastes ‘gamey,’ don’t blame the chef, talk to your butcher,” Scott Leysath, The Sporting Chef, host TV show of same name airing on Sportsman Channel.
“If your goals aren’t intimidating to you, they’re probably insulting to God.” Christian Berg, editor of Petersen’s Bowhunting shared this with me and said he’s not sure where it originated, but it helps him to trust that God can do more than ever think or imagine. Yep, I just included God in an Archery Wire editorial.
If you have a quote you live by – or mantra you created and want to share, I love to hear them – Michelle Scheuermann, editor, Archery Wire.