Quote of the day 16th June 2017

It is often alleged that Mark Twain once said that

"a lie will fly around the whole world while the truth is getting its boots on."

It is typical of the irony of life that this attribution is itself probably a lie.

The phrase was first attributed to him in 1919, nearly a decade after his death, and versions of the phrase had been around long before he was born.

A good example of an older, similar saying is this one from Dean Jonathan Swift


Regardless of who said,this, it is all the more true in the internet age.

Take for example this case where a tweet in which a journalist made an allegation which turned out to be wrong was re-tweeted 4,745 times within two days and had 2,380 "likes" but the correction when the same journalist admitted this was wrong has had far fewer. (Currently, also after two days, about 445 retweets and 435 "likes.")

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