May I Misquote You On That?

"Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?"
- Philip G. Hamerton,
The Intellectual Life
As a writer, I'm very cautious about checking my sources of information. As a reader, I'm thrown off by anything I know is obviously false, so it's important to my inner editor to be as accurate as possible. For example: In my work-in-progress, my character fumbles with a gun and an old cellphone, at the same time, ready to drop the phone in an instant if she has to fire. Now, in your average movie, that wouldn't be a problem. We see it all the time: the good guy whips out two Desert Eagles, and starts firing rounds from both, (somehow, magically hitting the bad guy). As a woman who's fired a pistol, however, I know this is impossible. First of all, firing a pistol one handed will most likely break your wrist, as the gun recoils. Second, the Desert Eagle is a huge gun, and notoriously hard to hit a target with. Even with my experience as a target shooter, I searched out a firearms advisor, to check my accuracy in the manuscript. After all, I haven't fired a pistol in twenty years.
I ran into a similar problem with using quotations. At one point, my protagonist is questioned by the police. In a moment of levity, she remembers an old TV show and a famous quote from it. As always, I looked up the quotation, to be sure I had the exact wording. The result of my research surprised me. My "Just the facts, Ma'am" was wrong! You see, the original Dragnet never used that wording. The real quote is "All we want are the facts, ma'am."
"Misquotations are the only quotations that are never misquoted." - Hesketh Pearson

A quick search will net you hundreds of instances where famous "quotes" are, in actuality, famous misquotes.
"Famous remarks are very seldom quoted correctly." - Simeon Strunsky, No Mean City

Here are just a few of the famous misquotes I found in a search:

"Elementary, my dear Watson."
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never penned this line. Near the beginning of The Crooked Man (1893), Sherlock Holmes does say "...my dear Watson", but it is several lines of dialogue before he says, "Elementary." The word is spoken alone, in response to an exclamation by Watson. This is the closest these four words ever appear together until P. G. Wodehouse wrote the phrase in his novel Psmith, Journalist (1909)

"Hell hath no fury, like a woman scorned."
This one isn't terribly far from the original. Eighteenth century playwright, William Congreve, composed the original, "Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."

"My momma always said, life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."
If you're quoting the 1994 film of Forrest Gump , you are correct. However, the author of the novel, Winston Groom, wrote an entirely different line: "Bein' an idiot ain't no box of chocolates." It's been said that Groom wasn't happy with the change.

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar"
This is one of the most confused examples I found. I'll break it down for you. First of all, the quote is attributed to Sigmund Freud, but it can't be found in any of his writings. It was more likely written by an anonymous journalist, long after Freud died. The story was that Freud was giving a lecture on oral fixation. One of his students made a sassy remark about the pipe Freud always had with him, and Freud supposedly replied, "Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe." So not only is the quote merely a rumour, but it was misquoted as well.

"Theirs is but to do or die!"
The correct quote, from Tennyson's The Charge of the Light Brigade , is only different by one word, but that one word changes so much. The original read: "Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die".

"Beam me up, Scotty!"
This phrase was never uttered by any character in the original Star Trek television series. Interesting to note, however, that the misquote became so popular, it was included in Star Trek: The Animated Series and Star Trek IV: The Voyage. James Doohan even chose the misquotation as the title of his 1996 autobiography. {Ah, the power of a misquote! :D}

"Play it again, Sam."
One of the most famous movie lines, never spoken. The actual quote, from Casablanca: "Play it once, Sam, for old time's sake..." Another popular misquote that became so accepted, it was used as a title. Woody Allen used the title Play It Again, Sam in homage to the original film.

"You dirty rat!"
Every time someone attempts their impersonation of James Cagney, they drag out this popular misquote. The closest Cagney ever came to the phrase was in Blonde Crazy (1931), where his character calls another a "dirty double-crossing rat!" The misquotation likely comes from Cole Porter's musical Anything Goes (1934).

"Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him well."
William Shakespeare is one of the most misquoted authors I've seen. Much of that likely stems from the numerous attempts to translate his work into today's common English. Any student of Shakespeare can tell you the actual quotation from Hamlet should be: "Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio – a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy." Although it's difficult to pinpoint the exact source of the misquote, I've heard it used by professional and amateur comedians so often, I've given up trying to correct people when they employ it. ;)

"Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast." Or more commonly, "Music can soothe the savage beast."
From William Congreve's play, The Mourning Bride (1697), the actual quote is: "Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast. To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak."

If you are a writer, it's up to you to decide whether to staunchly defend the "true" quotes, or to use the more commonly known misquote. As Hesketh Pearson wrote, in the Introduction for Common Misquotations : "Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely." On the other hand, Alfred North Whitehead said, " I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning , or destroyed it altogether." What do you prefer, as a reader? Would you rather read the familiar misquote, or the accurate original?

Researching this post reminded me of how careful I must be when choosing my words. Should I ever become famous, (Ha, ha, ha, ha! Excuse me.), the phrases I write may one day become twisted into fad phrases. How awesome would that be? ;D