The Art of "Quotemanship" and "Misquotemanship"

Quoting people accurately is really hard — and you can quote me on that.

Quote-Happy Candidate Trump Should Ignore His Quick Twitter Finger

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MQ 02282016 Trump Tweet
Earlier today (Feb. 28, 2016) he (or a surrogate) did it again. Donald J. Trump passed on a quote that he thinks could help make America great again. (Would love to know exactly what decade provides the template for “great”….)

“It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”

However, Candidate Trump–eager to trumpet aggressiveness–ignored the source of the quote.
It is widely attributed to Benito Mussolini (1883-1945), the brutal fascist Italian leader.
The tip-off to Candidate Trump, as you can see in the Tweet and the Re-Tweet pictured here, should have been that the quotation came to him from something called “ilduce2016”. That should have raised an eyebrow.
Again, as is the case in many “too good to be true” quotes, Candidate Trump should have taken a moment to learn more about it.
For the record, Il Duce was not exactly a “lion,” certainly not at the end when he tried to sneak across the border to safety–not as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, rather as a dictator in a German soldier’s clothing. Check out entry No. 9 on this site at History.com.

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