Posts circulated on social media attribute a quote onliberals and conservativesto the 26thPresident of the United States,Theodore Roosevelt. The quote, however, is falsely attributed to him.

Reuters Fact Check. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

The posts show a photograph of Roosevelt alongside text which reads:To anger a conservative, lie to him. To anger a liberal, tell him the truth.The posts do not point to a sourceforthe quotation, nor a possible date.

Examples of the claim are visible here , here and here .

On social media, users have responded with conflicting reactions. Some haveconcurred with the sentiment(one posted:Goshthats dead on),while others have disputed theauthenticity of the quotation.

Reuters found no mention of this quote among those compiled by the Theodore Roosevelt Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated toperpetuatinghismemoryandideals( here ).

The quote did not appear among the list of notable quotations listed by the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University, another organization working to preserveRoosevelts legacy ( here ).

In the past, the quotation has been attributed to other statesmen like Winston Churchill, ( here , here ).On other social media sites, the quotation has circulatedwith attribution to Roosevelt, as anonymous, or attributed to an unknown source since 2009( here ).

In 2013, BarryPopik, a contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary, the Yale Book of Quotations and the Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, found that the quote had been in print since about 2007 ( here ), as first reported byPolitifact( here ). Well after Roosevelts lifetime,Popiknotedin a blog entry.

Throughout the years,other fact-checkers have debunked this claim, ( here , here ).

False. The quote on liberals and conservatives attributed to Theodore Roosevelt is false.

This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here .

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Fact check: False Theodore Roosevelt quote about liberals and conservatives - Reuters