Quoting out of context

This article or section needs to be rewritten, because:
It's too political. (Discuss)

An out of context quotation is a kind of discrediting attack which attempts to "use a person's words" against them. "Putting words in someone's mouth" is another example. Sometimes, even a subtle change in wording can radically change what the speaker meant to say.

For example: as quoted in an advertisement for the film Be Cool:

"...Travolta is as smooth as ever..." —Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

The actual review:

"[John Travolta's character Chili] Palmer is back in 'Be Cool,' and although Travolta is as smooth as ever, the picture is a bust, a grimly unfunny comedy with no connection to reality, and worst of all, running on and on for two dismal hours."

Here is a subtle example.

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty" wrote the Romantic poet John Keats in "Ode on a Grecian Urn." That famous citation, which expresses 19th-century Romanticism's trust in feeling over reason, is pertinent in the case of Anne Carson's newest volume...

What can be possiby be wrong this reviewer's quotation of what is probably the most famous line Keats ever wrote? The missing context here is an additional set of quotation marks. The actual closing lines of the poem are:     When old age shall this generation waste,
      Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
    Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
      Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
It is not the narrative voice of the poem that says "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." It is the urn that says this to the narrator. The narrator is certainly moved by the urn, but it is by no means clear that the narrator fully agrees.

Like, "Most pollution comes from trees," a remark attributed by Anderson supporters to Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign.

Or, "She has stated that she is not impartial or balanced." (referring to Ann Coulter). Her political opponents seized upon this misquotation as an "admission" that she is partial or unbalanced in her writing, as a way of accusing her of political bias. What she actually said is that she does not pretend to be that way.