Is there an original source and definitive version of this quote, one version of which goes “God didn’t make all men equal, Sam Colt did.”? I’ve seen it paraphrased a number of different ways and I was wondering if there’s a “correct” version.
“God made man, Sam Colt made them equal.”
Don’t know if there even is a “correct” version or how one would quantify one version as being more correct than another?
Poking through Google Books this version by far seems to be the most popular:
“God created men, but Sam Colt made them equal”
There are a lot of variations, though:
“God created men, Colonel Colt made them equal”
“Some men are big, some men are small, but Sam Colt made them all equal”
“God made some men big and others small, but Samuel Colt made them equal”
“God created all men, but Sam Colt made them equal”
“Abe Lincoln may have freed all men, but Sam Colt made them equal”
There are also some intentional variations:
“God created men and women, but Sam Colt made them equal”
Most say it’s an old frontier saying, so I doubt that there is any one true “correct” version. I didn’t see any source that said it was a direct quote from someone originally.
The earliest I could find the quote in print was 1927–using Google Books, in a hunting and trapping magazine. The way they phrased it was–
I seriously doubt it was a saying in the Old West.