Typo of the week--if not the year

[redbird]

Celebrity/gossip columnist Liz Smith always starts her column with a quote, something random that's presumably supposed to be amusing or thought-provoking. It's the only bit of her column I read, because the quotes are often interesting and always brief.

Today, credited to Tertullian, was the statement "It is certain because it is possible."

Comments

fact checking gone horribly wrong

[webbob.livejournal.com]

According to Bartleby.com (http://www.bartleby.com/66/18/57718.html), The Columbia World of Quotations got this quotation sideways in 1996. I wonder whether Liz Smith got it wrong in the first place or a fact checker or copy editor pulled out the wrong reference book and leapt, as it says here on Wikiquote's Tertullian page (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Tertullian), De calcaria in carbonarium..