quote origins

History20 minutes ago

Booker T. Washington’s ‘obstacles’ line on success traces to a 1901 chapter on his West Virginia boyhood

The sentence sits in chapter two of Up From Slavery, written about salt furnaces and night school, and the 1901 wording lacks the 'had to' many reprints add.

History31 Oct 2026

Benjamin Franklin’s 1784 Paris letter proposed cannon at sunrise and candle rationing, not clock changes

As US clocks fall back on Sunday, November 1, Franklin's anonymous Journal de Paris satire shows he wanted shutters taxed and sleepers woken, not time moved.

History16 Oct 2026

The ‘insanity’ line credited to Einstein first appears in 1981 recovery-group texts, not his papers

A Knoxville, Tennessee, report on an Al-Anon meeting in October 1981 holds the earliest known wording; the head of Caltech's Einstein Papers Project calls the line "Not his."

History16 Oct 2026

Maya Angelou’s ‘how you made them feel’ line was printed in Utah in 1971 under another man’s name

A 1971 Salt Lake City quote book credits Carl W. Buehner, a church official who ran for Utah governor; Angelou's name was attached only in 2003, via a chain list.