Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Book ·329 of 348
"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."
They never said that.
What people say
"When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him."
What was actually said
"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." Jonathan Swift — "Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting" (1706)
Why it stuck
"Dunces are all" — not "all the dunces." Swift's word order puts the "all" after the noun. A small thing; but misquote versions change the meter of the sentence.
John Kennedy Toole used a version of the line as the epigraph to A Confederacy of Dunces (posthumous, 1980).
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.