Spot on, and sad.
And shared.
A lot of people attack this quote as not coming from Aristotle, but I could not find a proper attribution otherwise.
Furthest back I could find on Google was from 2001, and nobody questioned it then. Literally thousands of sources cite it as coming from Aristotle, but only recently has it been questioned.
The real problem here is the obsession with attribution.
Ideas ring either true, or they ring false. They either withstand scrutiny, or they do not. They are either meaningful and insightful, or they are not.
Adding a dash, followed by a famous name, does not make an idea more true. Adding a picture of a marble statue does not make the idea immune to criticism. Lacking such decorations does not rob an idea of meaning or insight. Nor even do false decorations, deliberate or accidental, turn a good idea into a bad one.
Focus on what is being said. Stop obsessing or depending on who said. It doesn't matter who said it.
Attributions are a courtesy. Nothing more. Shame anyone who acts as if they affect the merit of an idea, in any way, positively or negatively.
You're absolutely right, but people gravitate towards the appeal of notoriety.
Good comment.
Yeah I know, often I will use 'quote investigator' to seek an origin but ultimately I will usually just say, 'attributed to' ... anyways, it's the message that matters.
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