Spurious quotations (part umpteen)

Today’s spurious quotation comes to us from Republican gubernatorial candidate Andrew Hemingway and state House Rep. Jordan Ulery (R-Hudson), who posted a Facebook meme with a quotation attributed to Thomas Jefferson: “Most bad government has grown out of too much government.”

Researchers with the Thomas Jefferson Foundation consulted Jefferson’s archives and declared the quotation “has not been found in any of the writings of Thomas Jefferson.” Instead, the researchers determined the quotation “can definitely be attributed to John Sharp Williams in a speech about Jefferson, which has most likely been mistaken at some point for a direct quotation of Jefferson.”

The quotation appears on page 49 of “Thomas Jefferson: His Permanent Influence on American Institutions,” which Williams wrote in 1913. The researchers note the earliest known appearance in print of the quotation being attributed to Jefferson was a 1950 article in Forbes by Bertie Charles Forbes.

Now you know.