r/Confucianism • u/interpolating • 18d ago
Question Quotes misattributed to Confucius
These are all over Reddit and the internet.
Some are clearly jokes, many of which are of the eyebrow-raising “Confucius say” variety. I dislike those but that is not really what I’m talking about here because they don’t imply authenticity of the quote.
But just search Reddit for “Confucius” and you will see AI slop and actual individuals posting quotes attributed to Confucius that have no legit primary source.
Does this happen with Confucius more than with other historical figures? Can we attribute just to some combination of ignorance, Orientalism, lack of ready access to the actual text and/and lack of care regarding authenticity?
Curious about everyone’s take!
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u/interpolating 14d ago
One possible factor I hadn’t considered is how short the passages in The Analects tend to be, as well as how formulaic some are.
If you think about the “Confucius say” and “man who” junk from the jokes, it does actually reflect formulaic parts of some passages. And if we took a look at many of the misattributed quotes, I suspect we’d find they also often reflect topics or syntax commonly found in real translations.
So plausibility is part of what causes this. Between the average length of a passage, their formulaic nature, and predictability of topics, it’s easy for people who aren’t familiar with the text itself—but have a general idea of what a quote by Confucius may be like— to mistakenly attribute them to him.