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It's not misquote, it's paraphrase.

There's a fairly new term for this: snowclone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowclone

No, to paraphrase is to summarize or re-word [1]. I changed the meaning (from democracy to peer-review [2]). I'm not sure misquote was the best word-choice, but I definitely wasn't paraphrasing.

[1] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/paraphrase

[2] "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”" -- Winston Churchill

You can say what you want to say, since it's original, and say, "with apologies to Winston Churchill."

If you google "to paraphrase Winston Churchill", you hit the figure of speech that you've used. It's a pretty common turn of (para)phrase.

PS: Don't rely too much on dictionary.com, it's not the best. E.g. the New Oxford American Dictionary correctly gives the second meaning of "paraphrase: a rewording of something written or spoken by someone else".

It's a common phrase because it's meant to be funny. The word "paraphrase" is being used ironically

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