Shooting down a fake quote - not really from a famous writer and pilot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Brian Tracy blog post on July 6, 2024 titled 117 Leadership quotes for Inspiration, has the following quote at #23, allegedly from the well-known French writer and pilot Antoine de Saint Exupéry:

 

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

 

And at the Gem State Patriot News blog on June 30, 2024 there is a post by Brent Regan titled Unity which begins with a similar quote:

 

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

 

But an article by Garson O’Toole at Quote Investigator (QI) on August 25, 2015 titled Teach Them to Yearn for the Vast and Endless Sea found that Monsieur Saint Exupéry did NOT ever say those exact English words. They are a posthumous paraphrase from more than fifty-five years later.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For a real quote you can tell us precisely: Who said it, What he said, When in his lifetime he said it, and Where he said it. A quick glance at Wikipedia shows that Antoine de Saint Exupéry was born on June 29, 1900 and died on July 31, 1944. Garson says:

 

“QI conjectures that this section of ‘Citadelle’ [1948] inspired the construction of the modern quotation although one or more intermediate steps may have occurred. It was possible that someone read the section and created a paraphrase or commentary. The modern quotation might be based on this posited intermediate text. Saint-Exupéry himself may have written a text that was closer to the modern quotation although it has not been located.”

 

On May 11, 2024 I had blogged about another fake quote also used by Brent Regan, in a post titled A fake Alexander Hamilton quote, ironically about falling for anything. But for his more recent post he didn’t bother to check where I told him, at Quote Investigator. And in a comment on the more recent post, John Livingston outrageously whined about how my:

 

“Officious claims of inaccuracies when claiming a falsehood are equally dangerous.” 

 

A cartoon image of a Lockheed P38 was adapted from one at Openclipart.