How we verify quotes

A quote is only as good as its source. Before any page goes live, we try to find the quote in the place it first appeared, and we write down what we found, including when we found nothing.

1. Start from the original

For books, plays and poems we read the passage in a scholarly edition or a scan of an early printing, usually through Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive or a university library. For speeches we use official transcripts and recordings held by presidential libraries, national archives, parliaments and the Nobel Foundation. For letters and diaries we use published collections of the writer's papers. The exact words on each page come from that source, not from another quote site.

2. Trace the earliest appearance

When a quote cannot be found in the famous person's own work, we search newspaper archives, books and magazines for the earliest dated version of the wording, and follow how it changed and when the famous name became attached to it. Wikiquote and other collections are useful places to start looking, but we never treat them as proof, and we credit published research such as Quote Investigator when we rely on it.

3. Label what we found

✓ Verified Found in a primary source: the original book, speech transcript, letter or recording.
≈ Paraphrase The idea is genuine, but the popular wording is not what was actually said or written.
✕ Misattributed Someone else said or wrote it first; the famous name was attached later.
? Unsourced No reliable source has been found for this wording, so we cannot confirm who said it.

4. Explain in our own words

We quote only the short passage needed to show the exact wording and its context, and everything else on the page is our own explanation. We do not publish song lyrics, and we do not attach quotes to people without evidence. We never make up quotes, speakers or anecdotes.

5. Correct openly

New evidence turns up all the time. If you know of an earlier source or spot a mistake, please tell us through the contact page. We review every report and update the page and its sources.