What are some common sayings that are wrong?

Where there’s smoke there’s fire.

An attorney friend of mine said it is wrong to use it as an accusation of sorts.

“The proof is in the pudding” instead of “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”. The original saying meant that you can’t know what something is like until you try it. The success of the pudding (“the proof”) will be known once you eat it. But the “the proof is in the pudding” obscures that original meaning. This bastardized version seems to have a slightly different meaning sometimes, viz. “the evidence is there if you look for it” which is not quite what the original saying meant.

Money is the root of all evil.
Actually it’s, The love of money is the root of all evil. And you know, I agree with that.

Spare the rod, spoil the child.
No, don’t hit your kids you sick fucks!

It was a harsher time then. But it means if you don’t discipline they they’ll be brats.

You have the obvious incompatible ones:

He who hesitates is lost

versus

A stitch in time saves nine.

Practice makes perfect.

@elbanditoroso, When knitting, if you miss a stitch and don’t notice it right away, you gotta undo everything back to that point and start over from there. I can think of lots of ways where doing it right the first time saves a lot of time.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Maybe not so much now with being able to significantly alter photos.

Sweat out a fever. You can cause at minimum misery and at maximum brain damage or death with that advice.

I think the stitch in time was about darning socks or a seem unraveling. Stitching before the opening gets larger.

“All things equal” or “all things being equal”

Makes no sense in any application,

An ice cream cone,, a doorway, a ‘56 Chevy, a dog, a streetlight, grandma—all are things that are not equal to anything else in this random sample

“All things being equal,” is part of an argument to say one thing doesn’t have more value than another. In your example, for example, they are equal in that they are all exist.

I don’t need telling what it means, or some half arsed cock & bull about how times have changed.

“Great minds think alike.”

You can be anything you want to be.

You can do anything you put your mind to.

Time heals all wounds.

If you try hard enough, you can succeed at anything.

If you want something badly enough, it will come to you.

There’s a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

What goes around comes around.

“Ignorance is bliss.”

“Blood is thicker than water.”

Often taken to mean “blood”, as in family. IE: meaning that your ties to your family members are, or should be, stronger than any voluntary association you have.

The full saying – “the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb” means something else entirely. It’s an old saying, going back to ancient Rome. Its meaning is that the oaths you swear to others, usually “sealed” by the mixing of the blood of all involved (ie: blood brotherhood) outweighs any ties you have to someone only by simple chance of birth.

Mute point.

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/phrases-that-people-get-wrong.html

Good fences make good neighbors.

@Darth_Algar I did not know that!

I say this a lot, sometimes under my breath. However, it isn’t always true
You really don’t have to be an asshole to recognize one.

It takes one to know one.