Nothing makes us feel smart like repeating something an actual smart person once said. Why bother coming up with your own witty retort, when you're pretty sure you once read about something Winston Churchill may or may not have said to some other dick, way back in the day? Or maybe it was Oscar Wilde. Or maybe nobody actually said that at all, and you're just mashing up half-remembered takes in your head. You see the problem: Some of the most popular quotes from some of the most famous geniuses don't actually mean what we think they do. For example ...

5 Murphy's Law ("Anything That Can Go Wrong, Will Go Wrong") Was Just A Dig At His Own Bumbling Assistants

You know Murphy and his damn Law: "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." In other words: The universe is always out to get you. It doesn't matter if you plan ahead and prepare for all eventualities -- something will always go wrong and screw you over. Yep, the fundamental rules of the universe are why our last camping trip went to shit; it's not because we planned it at the last second and brought nothing but a Taco Bell combo box.

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What It Actually Means:

The original meaning was more like, "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong ... when you've got these chuckleheads for assistants." The Murphy in Murphy's Law wasn't some historic genius or ancient philosopher, but a U.S. Air Force engineer named Edward A. Murphy. His statement was prompted by a military experiment involving a rocket-powered sled, presumably devised as a way to capture and devour a particularly elusive roadrunner.

US Air Force

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Murphy was tasked with installing sensors of his own design on the sled, to measure its speed, but once the test was completed, the sensors hadn't measured shit. Murphy blamed the malfunction on his assistants, saying:

Nick T. Sparks

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"If there's any way they can do it wrong, they will." Yes, the original version of this popular proverb was just a passive-aggressive boss chewing out his employees (for something that might have actually been his fault).

As the sled experiment continued, other members of the team distilled Murphy's phrase to a more familiar form ("If anything can go wrong, it will"), and let it serve as a reminder to make their designs as idiot-proof as possible. Murphy's Law was never meant to imply there's a sitcom-like rule that the universe is out to get you. Just that your boss thinks you suck. Of course, this is all evidence of another universal law that generally holds true: "Shit rolls downhill."