I understand that we're talking LOTR memes, here, but I found a site called Quote Investigator, where they take famous quotes, like the things Ghandi apparently said, or Einstein, or whoever, and they run the quote down, and find the original, they find out if Einstein ever actually said that.

My dude.

Once they run the quote all the way to ground, it turns out Einstein never said it. The original quote was nothing like that, and the person who said it was a guy named something like Bill Ackerman at the Regional Banking Convention somewhere in 1963, where Bill gave a speech. The speech got printed out in Regional Banking Magazine, which is how the quote started to circulate.

His actual quote had a lot more words than the one you know.

So, over time, they decided to massage the quote so that it got shorter, pithier, and would fit on a bumper sticker while they passed it around and around.

Ol' Bill was clever enough, but his name didn't have enough clout, so they kinda slide him under the rug. Instead, this seems like something Gandi would say, so maybe let's just pretend Gandi said it. Next thing you know, the quote is a completely different sentence with a brand-new author who has no idea the world is attributing Bill's words to them. It helps if the new author is dead, so they can't pop up like,"Yo, I never said this shit."

And eventually it ends up posted on Facebook in some janky font with a purple background. Or worse, hanging on a piece of wood in Hobby Lobby.

That's nearly every famous quote you've ever come across. Over and over and over. It kept Quote Investigator busy for a while. At best, the original speaker did say it, but they took a machete to the original sentence until it was meme length.

Pretty crazy. So you are partaking in a grand old tradition. Carry on, I guess.