Things that weren't actually said, but became myths

Martin Cooper is deemed by some to be the inventor of the first handheld cellular phone and the first person to make a call on a handheld cell phone prototype on April 3, 1973, in front of reporters and passers-by on a New York City street. On Wikipedia one finds text from Cooper: I hate to mess up a good story but the Star Trek anecdote [about being inspired by Captain Kirk using his communicator on Star Trek ]is not exactly true. A TV program entitled “How William Shatner Changed the World” has a segment showing me being inspired by the Star Trek Communicator, but they made it up and I went along because it was “cute”. I’ve been sorry ever since.

Similarly, the statement "A billion here, a billion there...." is frequently attributed to Everett Dirksen. HOWEVER, this may be an urban legend created by a misquote of Dirksen by a newspaperman, as noted by the Dirksen Center: Update, May 25, 2004. A gentleman who called The Center with a reference question relayed that he sat by Dirksen on a flight once and asked him about the famous quote. Dirksen replied, "Oh, I never said that. A newspaper fella misquoted me once, and I thought it sounded so go that I never bothered to deny it."

See also Willie Sutton and "where the money is."