Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

George Eliot

Though it's all over the Internet, and fondly quoted, and printed on mugs and kitchen magnets, there is no proof whatsoever that George Eliot said or wrote the quote attributed to her on Goodreads:

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

Here is a good investigation of the history of the mis-attribution by Quote Investigator, which also references a thorough New Yorker article by Rebecca Mead:

http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/11/...

The quote should be removed--it's clearly ersatz Eliot.

Most of the quotes on Goodreads (especially the most popular ones) are bullshit. Pretty much every quote on the top Quotes page should be deleted, or at least re-attributed to anonymous internet trolls or greeting-card writers.

At least this quote, which I agree is fake, has a long pedigree of fakeness -- it was first attributed to Eliot only a few years after her death. My guess is that someone misremembered a line from one of her novels and never bothered to verify it.

Just merge it with Iyanla Vanzant, who probably said it at some point, perhaps even in her sleep.

But Goodreads says: Post on this forum and "the librarians" will investigate. Which they clearly haven't, since it's now January 10th.
The New Yorker clearly established the fraudulence of this quote: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...

and when a librarian who is interested in sorting out the quotes sees the post I am sure some one will

Librarians are volunteers and this kind of issue is not a type every librarian likes to work on, so it depends on if a librarian who likes this see this request and has time.

Renske wrote: "Librarians are volunteers and this kind of issue is not a type every librarian likes to work on, so it depends on if a librarian who likes this see this request and has time."

In other words: Not gonna happen, given that it's been over a month and a half.