“Luke, I am your father!” -Darth Vader
“Beam me up, Scotty.” -Captain James T. Kirk
“Me Tarzan, you Jane.” -Tarzan
Q: What do the famous quotes above have in common?
A: The characters never said them.
In The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker accuses Darth Vader of the murder of Luke’s father: “You killed him!” Vader responds, “No, I am your father”—not “Luke, I am your father.”
The crew of the Starship Enterprise often asked chief engineer Montgomery Scott to beam them up via the transporter, but no one in the Star Trek franchise ever said the exact words, “Beam me up, Scotty.” And in the 1932 classic Tarzan and the Ape Man, the hero says only, “Tarzan. Jane. Tarzan. Jane”—not “Me Tarzan, you Jane.”
Misquotations aren’t restricted to fictional people. George Washington never copped to chopping down a cherry tree by saying, “I cannot tell a lie,” and Albert Einstein never said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” In fact, some of the most famous sayings attributed to the saints of the Catholic faith are misquotations, misattributions, and, in some cases, total fabrications.
Before I continue, I need to address readers who might be rolling their eyes or muttering, “Nitpicker.” Does it really matter if people get one word wrong in a line from a Star Wars film? Who cares if the salutary story about George Washington and the cherry tree never happened? Why can’t you just leave the saints alone and concern yourself with something that’s important?
Accurately recording the wisdom of saints and other well-known Catholics is important, because truth is important. We are ambassadors for Christ, and our testimony about him needs to be trustworthy (2 Cor. 5:20). If people see us carelessly passing along “facts” or stories that aren’t true, they may doubt us when we quote the wisdom of Christ or tell the story of salvation that has taken place through him. As St. Teresa of Ávila said, “Never affirm anything unless you are sure it is true” (Complete Works St. Teresa of Ávila, vol. 3, 256).
It’s also important that we give credit where credit is due. Imagine your daughter broke a sports record, and a friend praised your son for breaking the record. You’d likely remind your friend that it was actually your daughter’s accomplishment, not your son’s. You would say this not to be a nitpicker but because you want your daughter to receive the praise she deserves. Likewise, the saints are our brothers and sisters in Christ, and we should do our best to accurately praise their accomplishments that lead people closer to the Lord.
But the most important reason we should challenge fake saint quotes is because, in some cases, they contradict the Faith these saints embraced. I can imagine some of the saints yelling from heaven, “No! I actually said the opposite!” Therefore, we must diligently separate fact from fiction in regard to alleged Catholic quotations.
Tracking down fake quotes
In order to prove a quote is authentic, all you have to do is produce a citation from a work by the person to whom the quote is attributed. In other cases, a citation from a reliable secondary source may suffice. For example, during his earthly ministry Jesus did not write anything down, so the record of what he said is contained in the Gospels.
But even these sources are not exhaustive, because St. Paul recites a saying of Jesus’ that the Gospels do not record: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). St. John tells us, “There are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).
This leads to the problem of proving a quote is inauthentic. What John says about Jesus is true, relatively speaking, about most people. People say and do much more than what is recorded about them in biographies or autobiographies or memoirs.
Therefore, when I say a certain quote is inauthentic or fake, I’m not saying it is certain the person never uttered those words. I am saying is we have no reason to believe the person said those words, because the words do not exist in either a primary source from that person or in a reliable secondary source that describes what he or she said and did.
In some cases, a disputed quote contains evidence of its own inauthenticity through a contradiction or anachronism. For example, the Irish author Oscar Wilde is reputed to have said, “You don’t love someone for their looks or their clothes or for their fancy car but because they sing a song only you can hear.”
Buzzer sound. Wilde died three years before the Ford motor company produced the Model A, much less any kind of “fancy car.” Moreover, in 1900, the year of his death, he described cars as “nervous, irritable, strange things,” so it’s doubtful he’d speak well of cars in general (Oscar Wilde: His Life and Wit, 323).
When it comes to famous saint quotes, some of them may contain similar anachronisms, or they may contradict something in the saint’s authentic writings. For example, some people claim St. Augustine said, “Women should not be enlightened or educated in any way.” But in City of God, Augustine defended the equal dignity of women and men by refuting the idea that in heaven we would all have male bodies. He also told a widow he instructed, “What more can I teach you?” (Of the Good of Widowhood, 2), which contradicts the idea that women should not be “enlightened or educated in any way.”
Another sign of inauthenticity is that the quote does not appear in any of the saint’s extant writings or in any early secondary sources. In addition, some of these allegedly original sayings are actually found in the writings of other people. A slam-dunk case for inauthenticity would include all three elements: anachronism/contradiction, absence in primary and secondary sources, and attribution to another author as the original source.
The kinds of “fake quotes” attributed to the saints are usually one of three types: misquotes, misattributions, and fabrications.
Misquotes
A misquote (or what I call “close, but not quite”) is similar to something a saint did say but still different enough to warrant mentioning. The earlier example from The Empire Strikes Back is a classic example of a misquotation, since the real quote and the misquote differ by a single word. These kinds of misquotes are usually just harmless paraphrases, but in some cases changing one word in a passage can alter the entire quote’s meaning.
For example, G.K. Chesterton is quoted as saying, “If there were no God, there would be no atheists,” but he actually said, “If there were not God, there would be no atheists” (The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton, vol. 3, 38). Chesterton wasn’t making the pedantic observation that atheists would not exist if God did not exist. Chesterton was pointing out that if God were not such an important part of the human experience, then no one would waste time debunking him. Chesterton writes in the same work that atheism lives in “an atmosphere of defiance and not of denial. Irreverence is a very servile parasite of reverence” (ibid., 37).
Misattributions
A misattribution occurs when an authentic quote is attributed to someone who did not originate it. For example, many people think the famous circus owner P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” But Barnum was too shrewd to insult the public so blatantly (although he did say people could be easily “humbugged”). Likelier candidates for the quote include Barnum’s rival Adam Forepaugh and con man Joseph Bessimer, whom the police called “Paper Collar Joe” (P.T. Barnum: The Legend and the Man, 336-337).
A famous Catholic example of a misattribution is the serenity prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. It goes, “Lord, grant me the strength to change the things I can, the serenity to deal with the things I cannot change, and the wisdom to know the difference.” The earliest version of the prayer comes from a 1927 Christian student newsletter that attributed this prayer to twentieth-century American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr: “Father, give us courage to change what must be altered, serenity to accept what cannot be helped, and the insight to know the one from the other” (“Serenity Prayer Skeptic Now Credits Niebuhr,” New York Times, Nov. 28, 2009).
The prayer increased in popularity after a secretary at Alcoholics Anonymous noticed it in a 1941 New York Herald Tribune obituary, and it was added to AA’s rehabilitation program as “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.”
Fabrications
Finally, a fabrication is a misattribution that does not have an original source. These usually come in the form of anonymous, inspirational quotes that are attached to famous people in order to make the quote more impressive. I doubt the majority of fabrications are intentional deceptions. One popular fabricated quote is, “Live simply so others may simply live.” This quote has been attributed to Gandhi, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and Mother St. Teresa, but there is no citation that connects it to any specific famous person. It’s essentially an anonymous quote that has been attached to many people who sound like a likely source for it.
The most famous fake saint quote
When I told people I was writing about fake saint quotes, their first response was almost always, “Oh, you mean like ‘Preach the gospel, use words if necessary?’” You can find this quote in countless Catholic schools and churches, despite the fact that many people, including historians, know it’s not authentic.
Mark Galli, the author of Francis of Assisi and His World, says of this saying: “No biography written within the first 200 years of [Francis’s] death contains the saying. It’s not likely that a pithy quote like this would have been missed by his earliest disciples” (“Speak the Gospel,” Christianity Today, May 21, 2009).
Many of the books that cite this quote admit it is spurious but justify quoting or even attributing it to St. Francis of Assisi because its message is still “Franciscan” in nature. Seventh-day Adventist author Gary Krause writes, “There’s no evidence that St. Francis actually made this statement, but it certainly fits the spirit of his teachings” (God’s Great Missionaries, 36). But this quote reflects “the spirit of St. Francis” only if we misunderstand the person of St. Francis and misinterpret the meaning of this apocryphal saying.
Let’s start with the quote itself. Most people think it means, “Preach the gospel in word and deed” or “Live the gospel that you preach.” If that were true, then it would be similar to Mother St. Teresa’s declaration, “Joy is a net of love in which you can catch souls” (which, unlike many Mother Teresa quotes, is actually authentic) (Love: A Fruit Always in Season, 108).
If that’s what the quote meant, I could tolerate it, even though it’s not authentic. But two words counteract this interpretation: if necessary.
Consider this advice: “Love your spouse, use words if necessary.” Most spouses would appreciate acts of service and affectionate gifts, but they would still be hurt if they never heard the words “I love you.” Or imagine I told you, “Build a swing set; use duct tape if necessary.” You would probably assume I meant “Use duct tape as a last resort,” or “It would be best if you could build the swing set without duct tape.”
Words are not an inferior tool we use to share the gospel when actions won’t suffice. Words are to the preaching of the gospel as lumber is to the building of a house: the latter cannot be done without the former.
One person who knew this was St. Francis himself. He was famous for his preaching—in other words, for his words. In Francis’s time, homiletic training at Europe’s universities stressed scholarly acumen more than pastoral sensitivity. This resulted in sermons that were dry or harsh in tone; but Francis was not university trained, so his preaching drew primarily from his conversion experience.
Francis’s focus on sharing the interior spiritual life can be seen in this advice he gave members of his order: “The preacher must first draw from secret prayers what he will later pour out in holy sermons; he must first grow hot within before he speaks words that are in themselves cold” (The Lives of St. Francis of Assisi, 295).
Ugolino Brunfortre, who collected some of the earliest traditions about St. Francis, recorded what happened when the saint drew from this spiritual well while preaching in his hometown of Assisi:
St. Francis ascended the pulpit and began to preach in so wonderful a way on holy penance, on the world, on voluntary poverty, on the hope of life eternal, on the nakedness of Christ, on the shame of the Passion of our Blessed Savior, that all those who heard him, both men and women, began to weep bitterly, being moved to devotion and compunction; and in all Assisi the Passion of Christ was commemorated as it never had been before (The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, 82).
Toil in the garden
I don’t wish to imply that people who believe in the authenticity of a fake saint quote are gullible or unintelligent. No one has time to research every fact or quote he hears, so we do our best to judge if something “sounds right” and hope our judgment pans out.
I used to say fake quotes and misinformation can spread quickly because, as Mark Twain said, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has time to put its shoes on.” It turns out, however, that the line evolved from the Irish satirist Jonathan Swift and not from Mark Twain, so I understand how anyone can make a mistake in these matters.
Finally, I’m grateful the Lord has inspired the saints to gift us with their wisdom. If those treasures did not exist, I would no more be motivated to debunk fake saint quotes than I would be motivated to landscape a yard that was nothing but weeds. Far from being an endeavor in “nitpicking,” accurately evaluating the saint’s words and deeds helps us appreciate who they really were.
When people hear the name St. Francis, instead of “preaching without words,” let them remember he said, “Where there is a heart full of mercy and discernment, there is neither excess nor hardness of heart” (Francis of Assisi: Early Documents, vol. 1, 137). When people think of St. Teresa of Ávila, I hope they’ll heed her call to “look for Christ Our Lord in everyone, and you will then have respect and reverence for all” (Complete Works St. Teresa of Ávila, vol. 3, 257).
And when people think of saints as historic relics of a bygone era, I hope they’ll remember the words of Opus Dei founder St. Josemaría Escrivá, who wrote in Friends of God: “Don’t forget that the saint is not the person who never falls but rather the one who never fails to get up again, humbly and with a holy stubbornness.”
Sidebar 1:
Don’t Pin It On Me: G.K. Chesterton
“Every man who knocks at the door of a brothel is actually looking for God.”
VERDICT: Misattributed
This is not found in any of Chesterton’s extant works, but it can be found in Bruce Marshall’s 1945 book, The World, The Flesh, and Fr. Smith.
The book’s titular character is having a conversation with a flirtatious young woman who chides him for his celibacy. She claims religion is just a substitute for sex, to which Fr. Smith responds, “I still prefer to believe that sex is a substitute for religion and that the young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God” (The World, The Flesh, and Fr. Smith, 108).
Chesterton also wrote fictional stories involving a priest, the Fr. Brown series, so it’s possible someone who read Marshall’s work confused the two characters.
Sidebar 2:
Don’t Pin It On Me: St. Augustine
“In necessary things, unity; in doubtful things, liberty; in all things, charity.”
VERDICT: Misattributed
The sentiment behind this quote is commendable, but the earliest citation of it comes from the seventeenth century and it is not attributed to Augustine (History of the Christian Church: Modern Christianity/The German Reformation, vol. 7, 650-653).
It seems to have been first used in 1617 by Archbishop of Split Marco Antonio de Dominis. Richard Baxter was apparently the theologian responsible for its dissemination throughout the English-speaking world.
Pope John XXIII said, “The common saying, expressed in various ways and attributed to various authors, must be recalled with approval: in essentials, unity; in doubtful matters, liberty; in all things, charity” (Ad Petri Cathedram, 72).