In the real world, quotes are there to be used, with or without attribution, with or without modification.
This would not be right in academic writing (or in public source software), but it is meat and potatoes in politics.
Consider, for example, the dual attributions:
"Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think." --- Niels Bohr
"You've got to guard against speaking more clearly than you think." --- Howard H. Baker, Jr.
Niels Bohr said it first, but Howard Baker said it better.
Incidentally, with Google one can now generate such examples almost on an "as needed" basis. Such searches provide a perfect coffee break activity.
It is even easy to set up a Google alert to snag new variations as they appear.
The Kissinger Reverse
"It is the 90% of politicians that give the other 10% a bad name."
Someone should check the evolution of this quote. I saw a version long ago (and used it a few times since) where "lawyers" serve in place of "politicians." The most recent attribution that I have seen pins the structure to the amazingly articulate (tough often guttural) Dr. Kissinger.
Two Fecund Examples from Computer Science
"When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like a thumb." --- Steve Haflich
"Power corrupts, and obsolete power corrupts obsoletely."---- Ted Nelson , on DOS and Microsoft
The hammer/thumb theme and the power corrupts theme both seem certain to yield rich harvests. They are fine feed stock for the emerging theory of quote genres.
For a classic example of adapted (as well as mangled) quotes, google some variation of Buckley's old saw about preferring
governance by a [subset of] the [Brookline, Cambridge, Boston, etc.] phone book in preference to a [subset of] the Harvard [faculty, law school, etc].
This nice little project has been on my list for a while. If you find the time to do it first, please let me know what you discover.
"The President's going to look at the W.B.O. revenue analysis and say that economists were put on this planet to make astrologers look good." --- from a transition scene where Leo McGarrity briefly berates some Congressional functionaries.
There are endless variations on this old astrologer/economist homotopie.
"An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question." — J. W. Tukey, as quoted in the Manchester Guardian.
Tukey said perhaps a thousand lines that deserve to be remembered, and it is saddening that the Guardian instead choose this one.
Many readers will recognize Tukey's line as a flat variation of a crisp classic of J. M. Keynes:
"It is better to be roughly right than precisely wrong."
Even if you are no fan of alliteration, you've got to admit that "roughly right" works here. It is both apt and memorable.
To be sure, Tukey is more focused. He drills down on an answer and a question, rather than content himself with some amorphous "it."
Nevertheless, who doesn't sense the loss?
One of these days, say ten years after Tukey's passing, I hope to follow up on this with the Guardian.