The things Presidents say

Listen to Dave Ross Commentary: The things Presidents say

Today we remember our two most famous presidents, Washington and Lincoln, who are in fact still with us through their most famous quotations.

Abraham Lincoln:

“You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.”

Or this famous one:

“You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.”

George Washington:

“Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force…a troublesome servant and a fearful master.”

All these are memorable quotes, and all with one thing in common…Washington and Lincoln never said them. They may have THOUGHT them, but there’s no record of it.

That Washington quote – is supposed to be in his Farewell Address, but it’s not.

Lincoln’s quote about not helping the poor by destroying the rich was actually in a pamphlet of sayings written by a preacher long after Lincoln’s death. And the one about not fooling all of the people all of the time – is based on a recollection of a Lincoln speech published 54 years later.

Of course the Gospels were written long after Jesus, and entire religions are founded on that…so maybe we shouldn’t doubt.

And heck, today, even with everything politicians say scrupulously YouTubed, we still can’t always agree on what they said – and if we can’t agree on what living people said a week ago, how can we expect to agree on what dead people said 200 years ago?

As Yogi Berra famously said, “I never said most of the things I said.”

Or did he?

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