Aristotle Didn't Say That! - On The Topic Of Criticism

The internet is full of fake quotations attributed to famous authors.  For some reason, Aristotle seems to attract more of these than most others, typically posted and then sometimes commented upon by people who know fairly little about him and his thought.  Here's a gem that has been making its way around the web - particularly in leadership, self-help, and personal development contexts:


Criticism is something you can easily avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.

This time around it happened to be cited by the Tiny Buddha site - using the quote as a springboard for what proved in parts an interesting article - starting, of course, by parroting an erroneous attribution that just a few moments' casual research would have revealed as such. 

Where does this quote actually come from?  Why couldn't it be from Aristotle?  Why would people unthinkingly accept and repeat that attribution.  Even if it is not from Aristotle, is there some value to the saying?  Those are some interesting questions that I'll answer below - though not in quite that order.