&gt; If enough people say that the quote is attributed to the wrong person then does it become fact like the redefinition of &quot;literally&quot;?<p>I think that&#x27;s funny as a question, but has the wrong premise.  There is no &#x27;actual&#x27; meaning of words; they have meaning only by mass human consensus.  (What is the actual meaning of &#x27;flumbiliable&#x27;?)  By contrast, there <i>is</i> an &#x27;actual&#x27; first utterer of a quote, whether or not there is any consensus on his or her identity.<p>(I suppose that you could argue, though, that it is only mass observation of a quote that makes it a quote <i>per se</i>, rather than just something I said; if I mutter something under my breath, and it later occurs as a widely quoted line in a movie, then should it be attributed to me, to the screenwriter, or to the character who said it?)