It reminds me of the small boy who jumbled his Biblical quotations and said: “A lie is an abomination unto the Lord, and a very present help in trouble.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) American diplomat, statesman

Speech (1951-01), Springfield, Illinois

Jumbling together parts of Proverbs 12:22 and Psalms 46:1.

The quotation is attributed to Stevenson in Bessie James and Mary Waterstreet (ed.), Adlai's Almanac (1952) and Bill Adler (ed.), The Stevenson Wit (1965). It is also repeated in an interview (1953-03), "Pageant Visits: Adlai E. Stevenson," Pageant Magazine.

The quote is sometimes given without the preface (making it sound as if Stevenson used the phrase directly).

The anecdote was not original with Stevenson. Historian David McCullough in his history of the building of the Panama Canal, The Path Between the Seas (1977) says the phrase was used on the floor of the US Senate by John T. Morgan, who served there 1877-1907. I have also found versions of it in 1899 and 1902.

See also Elizabeth Knowles, What They Didn't Say (2006).