Abraham Lincoln
US President Donald Trump and wife Melania look at the Abraham Lincoln statue as they arrive for a welcome celebration at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on January 19, 2017. Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The Republican National Committee's official Twitter account commemorated Abraham Lincoln's birthday on Sunday (12 February) by mistakenly posting a quote wrongly attributed to the 16th US president. As expected, social media users wasted no time in responding to the tweet with jokes and fake quote memes of their own.

The GOP shared a photo of the Lincoln Memorial accompanied with the quote: "And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

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"His leadership brought us together; his legacy inspires us all. Happy Birthday, President Lincoln!" the GOP's tweet read.

However, according to Quote Investigator, there is no "substantive evidence that Lincoln used the expression". The website says the earliest appearance of the adage was used in a 1947 advertisement for a book on aging by Edward J Stieglitz.

The ad, which reportedly ran in the Chicago Tribune read: "The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years."

The site said the quote was attributed to former Illinois governor and Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson II at one point as well, who used a version of the adage in speeches back in 1952.

"QI would tentatively credit Edward J. Stieglitz with the saying," the site said. "However, it is possible that the statement was crafted by an advertising copywriter instead of Stieglitz himself. It is also possible that earlier instances exist that QI has not yet located.

"Adlai Stevenson did use the saying on more than one occasion while giving speeches. The attachment to Lincoln is currently unsupported."

Multiple quotes websites including BrainyQuote.com, Goodreads and QuotationsPage.com among others also mistakenly attribute the quote to Lincoln.

President Donald Trump's Instagram account also posted the same image with the caption: "HAPPY BIRTHDAY Abraham Lincoln!!!"

As expected, people were quick to mock the Republican Party's gaffe on Twitter and swiftly flooded social media with their own fake Abraham Lincoln quotes and hilarious memes.

Social media users also poked fun at the US Department of Education after its official Twitter account misspelled the name of W.E.B. Du Bois, an African-American sociologist, historian and civil rights activist that was accidentally spelled "DeBois."

The department apologised for the error, which came during the Black History Month, with a subsequent tweet that had another typo, which was later corrected.

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