"I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means."
with apologies to Inigo Montoya...
Partial list of famous quotes that are commonly misremembered or inappropriately applied or simply misunderstood.
Milton Friedman on the social responsibility of business from his 1970 essay in The New York Times:1
The discussions of the “social responsibilities of business” are notable for their analytical looseness and lack of rigor. What does it mean to say that “business” has responsibilities? Only people can have responsibilities. A corporation is an artificial person and in this sense may have artificial responsibilities, but “business” as a whole cannot be said to have responsibilities, even in this vague sense.
…
But the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book “Capitalism and Freedom,” I have called it a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and have said that in such a society, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”
New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael in 1972 on who voted for Nixon:
I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon. Where they are I don’t know. They’re outside my ken. But sometimes when I’m in a theater I can feel them.
As attributed to William Shakespeare regarding being a jack of all trades:
A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one.
The story of King Canute and the Tide (from Wikipedia):
In the story, Canute demonstrates to his flattering courtiers that he has no control over the elements (the incoming tide), explaining that secular power is vain compared to the supreme power of God. The episode is frequently alluded to in contexts where the futility of "trying to stop the tide" of an inexorable event is pointed out, but usually misrepresenting Canute as believing he had supernatural powers, when Huntingdon's story in fact relates the opposite.
This one counts double since people commonly leave out the last part “…so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud” and since people neglect to appreciate the larger point that it is inappropriate and socially destructive to have businesses engage in social projects (use of resources) that are not the desires or aims of those who own the business itself.