I read this in Unspun, Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation, written by Brooks Jackson and Kathleen Hall Jamieson.
The internet teems with unverified "quotes" supposedly uttered by famous people. Some of these attributions, perhaps, may be false. For example, we heard a nice remark by Albert Einstein that we thought might fit in this book: "Information is not knowledge." We take that to mean that raw facts mean little unless we validate them, think about them logically, and follow them to a valid conclusion. Sage advice, but none of the many internet citations we found told us when the great physicist gave it , or where, or to whom. Did he say it in a lecture, a book, a letter to a colleague, or an interview? Was it a casual remark to a friend or colleague who mentioned it later in his or her own writings?
We checked with Barbara Wolff at the Albert Einstein Archives of the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, where the physicist's surviving personal papers and writings are housed. She told us: "The quote in question is not known to me, and was not found among Einstein's identifiable quotes."
How could so many people make the mistake of falsely attributing words to Einstein? Ms. Wolff has a theory, with which we agree: "As, unfortunately, it happens again and again, someone migh have composed a more or less meaningful aphorism, and, anticipating that his own name would not draw attention to it, simply foisted it on Einstein." Be careful about any quotation whose source cannot be verified. Sometimes the person quoted never really said it.
Unspun is one of the best books written to help you understand where information comes from and how to find the facts, just the facts! Its an easy read and I highly recommend picking it up - you could read the entire book on a round-trip from Philadelphia to Dallas for the holidays. The book is quite entertaining too.
