John Oliver is Tired of Misquotations

This week’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver mostly focused on the Canadian election. SNL alum and Austin Powers lead Mike Myers even came out in a mounty costume to tell everyone not to vote for Conservative Party candidate Steven Harper.

It was one of Oliver’s best bits of the year, but he wasn’t finished there. He closed the show with a brief segment on politicians misquoting America’s forefathers. In a hilarious video package, Last Week Tonight showed multiple politicians, both democratic and republican, quoting people like Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. The kicker was that Abraham Lincoln never said “You can fool all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time.” Also, Thomas Jefferson never spoke out about gun control, because the concept of gun control didn’t exist in his lifetime.

Misquoting great American figures has become out of control in the internet era. Oliver is totally correct when he says that if you have the right font and the right photo to act as the background, you can make any quote believable. That’s why he launched a new website called DefinitelyRealQuotes.com; a website that shows a photo of important historical figures and places quotes that they never said in front of them.

The website is live and works well, but there aren’t many included quotes, which leads to a lot of repeats. It’s still fun to kill a minute or two. Check it out for yourself at definitelyrealquotes.com.

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver returns to HBO on November 1.