What did he say? Remembering messages from beloved presidents

Today we remember our two most beloved presidents: Washington and Lincoln.

These two great men are kept 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 quote:

“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.”

We also have this famous George Washington quote:

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

All memorable quotes and all with one thing in common: Washington and Lincoln never said them. They may have thought them but there is no record of it.

That last 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 the people all the time is based on a recollection of a Lincoln speech published 54 years after the fact.

Now, of course the gospels were written long after Jesus and entire religions are founded on that, so maybe we shouldn’t doubt.

And today even with the relentless YouTube-ing of everything politicians say 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.” At least he says he said that.