Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts. ~ Sir Winston Leonard Spenser Churchill (1874 – 1965). Or not.

I was just about to post this quote from Sir Winston Churchill when I came across the Quote Magnet blog post from Grammarphobia by Patricia T. O’Conner and Stewart Kellerman. I learned that some public figures have had quite a few utterances attributed to them that — gasp! — they never said.

I am crushed. Especially as the “Success is not final …” quote is one that has Sir Churchill’s name attached to it, but not in any place that attributes it to him. In fact, after I read the Quote Magnet post, I acquired a book of Churchill quotes, Churchill by Himself, The Definitive Collection of Quotations edited by Richard Langworth, a Churchill historian. And in it, there in black and white in the Red Herrings: False Attributions chapter on page 580 is the “Success is not final” quote followed by the statement “No attribution.”

Rats! I really like the quote and I really like Sir Winston Churchill but never the twain did meet.

Speaking of Twain, Mark Twain, that is, he is another person who didn’t say some of the things we find with his name on them. The Quote Magnet blog post starts with an inquiry about a quote supposedly from Mark Twain: “If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.” No direct attribution to him as far as anyone can find. He is another example of a quotation magnet, “a term,” the Grammarphobia blog explains, “coined by Fred Shapiro, author of The Yale Book of Quotations, for people often credited with saying things they never said.”

Sir Churchill, it seems, has so many quotations falsely attributed to him that there is a term for it: Churchillian Drift. A couple of other quotations Sir Churchill didn’t say, according to those in the know: “Every dog has his day” and “I am just preparing my impromptu remarks.”

The Internet makes it oh-so-easy for false attributions to take on a life of their own. I found the “Success is not final” quotation on the Internet and thought nothing of believing it without any verification. Now I know better.

Caveat lector, if you get my drift.