Also, did Musk actually say that.
Well, he quite possibly did, and if he did, he probably thought he was quoting Mark Twain, to whom this well worn quotation is usually attributed.
But
there's no hard evidence that Mark Twain said this first, or indeed, that he ever said exactly this, though he did express some similar sentiments, for example:
How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and [how] hard it is to undo that work again!
Baltasar Gracián is the first person I can find reference to as saying something in this vein; according to
Quote Inspector, he wrote a short essay on the problem of people being highly defensive of foolish ideas in his 1647 work “Oráculo Manual y Arte de Prudencia” (“The Art of Worldly Wisdom”).
Regardless of who said it first, it's fairly clear that the phrase significantly pre-dates Elon Musk's birth.
I strongly recommend that people stand well back from their irony meters, and ideally behind a robust object that can provide protection against blast and/or shrapnel.
We must confess that our adversaries have a marked advantage over us in the discussion. In very few words they can announce a half-truth; and in order to demonstrate that it is incomplete, we are obliged to have recourse to long and dry dissertations.
— Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, First Series (1845)
Split from here
