As someone who collects quotations, it's amazing how many famous quotes are elisions or paraphrases of what the author actually said. (Good rule of thumb: if it's put in big print on a small poster, it's likely not the original words.) It's also amazing, even with the power of Google, how difficult it can be to find the sources of some common "everyone knows he said that" quotations.
But it's a lot of fun trying, especially when you succeed. (Thank you, Google Books!)
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'Beam Us Up, Mr. Scott!': Why Misquotations Catch On
How sayings from books, movies, and speeches get misremembered
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