https://spectatorworld.com/topic/bons-mots-and-bad-money-inflation/
I have often been struck by the number of pithy observations — revelatory, pointed or simply true — that were not said by the person to whom they are attributed. Vladimir Lenin apparently never said (in Russian or in English) that “the way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.”
Mark Twain, to whom many amusing remarks have been falsely attributed, apparently did not contend that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Edmund Burke neither said nor wrote that evil would triumph if good men did nothing.
Churchill, like Twain a magnet for orphaned mots seeking parents, did not say that “the idea that a nation can tax itself into prosperity is one of the crudest delusions which has ever befuddled the human mind.
Tocqueville, yet another favored repository of crisp admonitory apothegms, did not point out that “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”
One thing to note about these pairings of putative author and scintillating observation is how plausible the linkage always is. Lenin certainly could have made that remark about grinding the bourgeoisie: he was keen on deploying any available millstones to destroy the class he abominated. Unlike Chief Justice John Marshall, who pointed out during the economic crisis of 1819 the great danger that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy,” Lenin thought of its destructiveness as an advantage.
As for inflation, has anyone improved upon Ronald Reagan’s warning that “inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber, and as deadly as a hitman”?
