That phony ‘faster horses’ quotation again

Yesterday at the Official Toastmasters International Members Group on LinkedIn someone posted about the new Pathways education program with what he thought was a quotation from Henry Ford (as is shown above). His point was that visionary leaders looked out for our future needs rather than what we would have said we needed right now.

I commented by pointing him to an article by Patrick Vlaskovits on August 29, 2011 at the Harvard Business Review web site titled Henry Ford, innovation , and that “faster horse” quote. It wasn’t the first time that unreal quote popped up at that LinkedIn Group. On August 26, 2017 I had blogged about Don’t hang your article from a bogus quote (and also watch your social network etiquette).

He replied that he was more focused on the words and meaning of the quote than with who said it. But he used a photo of Ford, so it clearly was an Argument from Authority. Those words just don’t carry the same weight when paired with an old Puck cartoon (as seen above).