This article is part of Finding the Words, a newsletter that delivers practical insights on the day’s issues.

I love stories. I love how they bring people together and how they can help bridge the widest of divides. Stories are why I went into the field of public relations as an undergraduate student at Loyola University of Maryland and why I built my career around using communication as a tool for social change.
 
It’s also why I love this quote from Nelson Mandela:
“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.”
 
This quote is among the most well-known and widely shared of Mandela’s quotes. It’s been used by well-established thought leaders, in scholarly publications, books, and presentations, with thousands of references to this quote across social media.
 
For years, Mandela’s words adorned a wall in our company's office suite. Painted in red, these words were my daily reminder of the power of story and what’s possible when our heads and hearts align.
 
There’s only one problem: Nelson Mandela never said it.
 
I learned this hard truth while recording a podcast episode in 2020. It was early in the pandemic, and we had left our office space to retreat to makeshift home offices. (I didn’t know then that we’d never return to our office suite as a team.) In post-production, my producer called to share that the quote was wrong. There was no record of Mandela ever saying it, and like many quotes, its actual meaning had been lost.
 
In that moment, I felt lost, too. I had leaned so heavily on those words. What did it mean for my work that they were never actually said? Thanks to some serious digging by Harvard scholar Pierre de Galbert, I learned the truth—that in 1992, Mandela actually said this in conversations with Richard Stengel:

“Because when you speak a language, English, well many people understand you, including Afrikaners, but when you speak Afrikaans, you know you go straight to their hearts.”
 
Over time, his words had been simplified down to the precept I had learned in some book many years earlier. I hung onto them, and referenced the words often, and then I painted them onto an office wall.
 
It may not seem like much of a difference between the two quotes. The spirit of the two is very similar. But behind the words, the difference in meaning is significant: Mandela was talking to Engel about Afrikaans, the language of the oppressor, and according to de Galbert’s research, “this quote was likely said in the context of learning the language of the prison guards. The meaning here was clearly in the context of a strong power differential between the speakers.”

The way I used the quote was all wrong.  And while the words meant something profound to me, was utterly divorced from what Mandela’s words had meant to inspire in his audience.

And that IS a big difference.

Today, with access to information (and misinformation) at our fingertips, we are constantly misattributing and misquoting famous figures. We take complex phrases and boil them down to memorable slogans that appear in public communications, advertisements, speeches, and on the walls of our office spaces. So often without getting to the root of the actual words.
 
For instance, here’s a statement by Mahatma Gandhi:
If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him…. We need not wait to see what others do.
 
…which has been mis-quoted for decades as this:
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
 
So, how to know if the quotes you love are in fact the words that were spoken? As I learned from this Mandela mis-quote, getting to the root of a quote can be very complicated, but there are good sources:

• Start with Google. Focus on finding out when the quote was said and aim to find the original text.

• If there are conflicting entries, check Wikiquote’s List of Misquotations

• And if you need more help still, turn to Garson O’Toole’s Quote Investigator

• You might even find your answer over at Snopes, a well-regarded reference for sorting out online myths and rumors

 
And if you still can’t find an answer, it may be time to find another quote. As for me, while the Mandela mis-quote was a guiding force in my work, I’ve stopped using it publicly. Instead, I reference it as a reminder that communication is best when delivered from a place of truth.
 
Bottom line: It's all too common for meaningful sayings to be altered or removed from their original context, making it hard to know who said what, and when. Focus on getting down to the roots of the words you choose to use, and when in doubt, stay grounded in the facts.

Ready for more? Listen to this article on the Mission Forward podcast.

This post is part of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.