Some Thoughts on Quotes
And a few resources to find sources for quotations
Quotes are these things we all engage with but don’t think about that much. People don’t have too many opinions about quotes. I think people don’t respect them as much as they should.
I have a rule where I don’t quote someone unless I can verify they said it.1 I don’t think most people follow this rule, which is a shame. People share quotes all the time without looking into them to see if they’re attributed accurately.
As an extreme example, people often quote Voltaire as saying: “To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” Voltaire never said that. The phrase was actually coined by a neo-Nazi (who is also likely a pedophile).
There are a few good resources that I use to verify the sources of quotations.
Lib Quotes is a site that indexes tens of thousands of quotes and provides the source for each one. Their motto is “Don’t quote it if you can’t source it.”
The Internet Archive is a site that hosts millions of books and lets you search for text in them. This is helpful for verifying for yourself the accuracy of a quote.
Quote Investigator is another good resource. It’s run by a guy that does in-depth research on quotes to find their source. He also finds different variations of the quotes that have been used over the years.
Note: this post originally appeared on my substack.
