27 Famous Quotes That Are Constantly Misused

Context isn’t a resource that’s in plentiful possession these days. Even news headlines and interviews are shaved and shaped into anything that will stop the inevitable scroll of a phone screen. Does that lead to false interpretations and meanings? Of course, but when you eliminate information from something, what you create is called a “curiosity gap,” and it’s pure gold in the content game.

Quotes, too, are pulled to convey greater ideas, often with the context be damned. Now, I’m not saying you have to read every word of Shakespeare before you fire off some of his best chestnuts. Even on a smaller, more reasonable scale, though, there are many quotes that have, over time, lost pretty important pieces. 

Below, Redditors relate quotes that we’re constantly hearing half of, sometimes entirely changing the energy of what they really mean.