Yikes! My Lincoln quote sig may be bogus!

[cjolley]

Jeeze, you can't even trust Lincoln any more....

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Midwest/11/30/lincoln.quotes.ap/index.html

chuck

[az]

Just remove the "Abraham Lincoln" and all is fine again

AZ

[Brian R.]

I think it should be
You can fool all of the people some of the time,
and some of the people all of the time,
but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

[Brian Ellis]

The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations certainly gives no positive attribution to Lincoln. The first quotation appeared nearly 40 years after the guy was helped on his way:

You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all the time.
In Alexander K. McClure Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories (1904); also attributed to Phineas Barnum

Interestingly, the quotation uses 'may', not 'can' for the first hypothesis.

I like the Barnum attribution: he was a lot more cynical than Lincoln ("sucker born every minute").

[KvHagedorn]

I seem to remember mentioning that I thought it was PT Barnum way back when you adopted that sig, Chuck.

[cjolley]

Originally posted by KvHagedorn
I seem to remember mentioning that I thought it was PT Barnum way back when you adopted that sig, Chuck.

Attributing it to Barnum could change the percieved meaning quite a bit.

It would come out "Dang!, I can't fool em' all the time!?"

Not exactly the normal take on the phrase.
chuck