49
votes
Did Richard Feynman say that anyone who claims to understand quantum physics is lying or crazy?
I can’t find hard evidence for the “lying or crazy” quote, but as OP already mentioned, Feynman said something very similar in content, if perhaps less colorfully phrased:
I think I can safely say ...
- 4,539
36
votes
Did Napoléon Bonaparte ask his wife Josephine not to bathe for several days in a letter before his arrival?
It was an urban legend years before the alleged 1981 origin
I was able to find some snippets and they mostly throw doubt on it being a real Napoleon quote, not least because it's been attributed to so ...
- 27.8k
32
votes
Accepted
Did Lincoln say, "When we buy steel made in America, we get the steel and the money too"?
No.
From Frank Taussig (1914), "Abraham Lincoln on the Tariff: A Myth":
It seems certain that the phrase is apocryphal. There is no evidence that Lincoln ever used it. ... By dint of ...
- 1,598
27
votes
Did Hitler say that "private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy"?
I'm not sure what the German original says, but the English version in the Nuremberg files (vol VII, p. 558) has it as:
REPORT OF SPEECHES BY HITLER AND GOERING TO GERMAN
INDUSTRIALISTS ON 20 ...
- 56.9k
20
votes
Accepted
Did Plato and Socrates discuss picking the largest ear of wheat in a wheat field?
No, that story is not in Plato’s Dialogues. You have here Jowett’s translation of Plato’s dialogues. I didn’t read it, but I looked up all instances of wheat (it is a PDF), there are 9, and they have ...
- 430
19
votes
Did Lincoln say, "When we buy steel made in America, we get the steel and the money too"?
This was debunked in 1914 by Abraham Lincoln on the Tariff: A Myth The Quarterly Journal of Economics Vol. 28, No. 4 (Aug., 1914), pp. 814-820:
THOSE who have followed the campaign literature on the
...
- 103k
11
votes
Are Socrates' 3 tests from a historical source?
To complement Avery’s answer, the three-sieves maxim has been around at least since the mid-1800s. It appears in Rev. Charles B. Tayler, Lady Mary or Not of the World (London, 1845, p. 205):
“...
- 430
9
votes
Accepted
Did Ataturk say that Islam is "an absurd theology" and "a rotting corpse which poisons our lives"?
I believe I have discovered an earlier source for this quote in the book Gray Wolf: The Life of Kemal Ataturk, by H. C. Armstrong. This book was published in 1933.
I've skimmed through sections of the ...
- 106
9
votes
Did Hitler say that "private enterprise cannot be maintained in a democracy"?
Following @xyldke's comment on Fizz's answer, the German original says
Privatwirtschaft im Zeitalter der Demokratie ist nicht aufrechtzuerhalten; sie ist nur denkbar, wenn das Volk eine tragende Idee ...
- 1,344
8
votes
Is there documented evidence that George Kennan opposed the establishment of NATO?
David Mayer's 1990 book George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy has the most detailed account on Kennan's view on that that I could find, albeit a lot of that is paraphrased (pp. 152-155):
...
- 56.9k
7
votes
Does Sitt al-Banaat Khaalid exist, and did she write about the benefits of FGM?
The answer to this question was hiding all along on the linked website, since Islamqa offers its articles in multiple languges.
If you switch languages from English to Arabic, Sitt al-Banaat Khaalid ...
- 42.8k
6
votes
Did Napoléon Bonaparte ask his wife Josephine not to bathe for several days in a letter before his arrival?
The earliest example I see so far of this claim is from 1963:
See Car and Driver volume 8, June 1963, page 75 (alternative link to University of Michigan source):
Your room , which will be spotless , ...
- 103k
6
votes
Did Voltaire say/write "In 100 years, the Bible would be a forgotten and unknown book?"
[Ah, the joy of trying to prove a negative. I'm happy to edit or delete if anyone finds an authoritative citation.]
I've not found anything to confirm that Voltaire ever said (or wrote) this.
The ...
6
votes
Did Obama tell people to ignore those warning against tyranny?
Since the original claim is that Obama contradicted Jefferson (and presumably by implication that Obama didn't understand the founding principles of U.S. government), I think the quote attributed to ...
- 3,135
6
votes
Did Alexander Graham Bell suggest that “Ahoy!” (or some variation of it) be the standard telephone greeting?
Thomas A. Watson was an assistant to Alexander Graham Bell during the pioneering days of the telephone.
On 17th October 1913 Watson delivered an address at the Third Annual Convention of the Telephone ...
- 6,615
6
votes
Accepted
Did the Joint Intelligence Staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff claim the USSR would convince all Japanese?
The quote appears in some other papers like this 1991 one by Alperovitz & Messer with reference to the primary sources, which however are almost certainly not online:
Aside from the fact that it ...
- 56.9k
5
votes
Did Time Magazine publish an article in 1931 explaining how to prepare and roll marijuana?
Time Magazine published a short article on September 7, 1931 about marijuana, but the article does not "explain how to prepare and roll marijuana". Instead, it provides a brief description ...
- 7,769
5
votes
Did Erwin Schrödinger say there is only one mind in the universe?
I believe the first sentence of the quotation is a paraphrasing of a section from his book of essays, What Is Life? : The Physical Aspect of the Living Cell ; with Mind and Matter ; & ...
5
votes
"The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe"?
I find links before 09/05/2017, with a search on Google for "The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe" and adding a filter to find before this date.
We can see for example the ...
5
votes
Did Richard Feynman say that anyone who claims to understand quantum physics is lying or crazy?
There are multiple interpretations of quantum mechanics that seemingly contradict one another. (They don't.) The end results of a calculation, what the mathematics says regarding an experiment using ...
- 14.4k
4
votes
Did Voltaire say/write "In 100 years, the Bible would be a forgotten and unknown book?"
As alluded to in another answer, the 1849 appendix of 33rd Report of the Annual Bible Society summarizes a statement by Rev. William Snodgrass, D.D., and the summary says:
...Voltaire , who predicted ...
- 103k
2
votes
Accepted
Did Napoléon Bonaparte ask his wife Josephine not to bathe for several days in a letter before his arrival?
I obtained the purported citation Lettres d’amour à Joséphine (Fayard, 1981), which was also mentioned by Chantal Jacquet in Le Monde in 2013. Page 155 does not contain anything like the phrase “Ne te ...
- 42.8k
2
votes
Are Socrates' 3 tests from a historical source?
This seems uncharacteristic of Socrates. From what I remember having read many of the Socratic dialogues, the character of Socrates was as someone focused on finding truth and expelling untruth. ...
- 516
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible