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Charlie Brown? I seem to recall some comics with Lucy or Linus quoting it. There is a Peanuts book titled "Speak Softly and Carry a Beagle", which

Glenn said:

I always heard that the Roosevelt quote was "Walk softly and carry a big stick, and you will go far." Today I was challenged, and I find that the actual Roosevelt quote was "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far" Roosevelt Quotes

Does anyone know where the popular misquote comes from?

To answer your question, according to one commentator: "Apparently, this well-known proverb isn;t an American invention, but is African in origin. Bartlett's *Familiar Quotations* should note that Theodore Roosevelt's biographer, H.F. Pringle, in his *Theodore Roosevelt*, (1931), quotes Teddy as saying in the fiest recorfefe use of the expression: 'I have always been fond of the West African proverb "Speak softly and a carry a big stick; you will go far."' Pringle has [Roosevelt] saying this in 1900; in the 1901 speech Bartlett's quotes, Roosevelt prefaces the proverb with 'There is a homely adage that runs . . . .'" Robert L. Hendrickson, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins 179-80 (2004). (Please someone let me know if this source is spurious or inadequate; I find it fun reading and more informative on phrases than other dictionaries, so I keep it in my "immediately accessible" shelf with Bryan Garner, Fowler, Strunk & White, and the Bluebook.)

Wow, I still left an inappropriate punctuation mark. The verb in the first clause of the quote should read "isn't", not "isn;t". However, I *do* think semicolons are either underused or misused, so a new invention for them would be fun. After all, the most recent innovation for the semicolon was its use as a winking left eye in an emoticon ( 😉 ). Hmmmmm . . . . That may be something for another discussion.

I'm not sure where the misquotation originated, but it seems understandable, no? The idea of the actual quote is that one should be peaceable and diplomatic, but back that up with potentially crushing power. "Walk softly" would suggest that a person leaves no footsteps -- that is, that the person is ethereal and omnipresent, yet able to bring wrath. One of the articles I found cites other examples of misuse (you've probably already found this article, too, as it appeared on the first page of my Google search for "Walk softly and . . ."; my numerous usage guides had nothing to offer on the topic). I'm not sure how to use hyperlink on this Website, so here is the URL for the article: http://www.businesspundit.com/walk-softly-and-carry-a-big-stick/ . The article only mentions the saying in its first paragraph, but the only other examples I found merely use the misquotation as though it were accurate, which, as you noted, it is not.

Anyway, I don't have good scholarly database access (just limited Westlaw and LexisNexis), so perhaps someone else could find some research on it. Or not.