If you create a website with wrongly attributed quotes Google will pick it up. And the more people complain and link to your website as incorrect the more popular it will get and eventually people just start making memes and sharing on all social networks and then the quotes becomes true in the eyes of the googlers.
Don’t believe quotation websites
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Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#12"I hate quotation. Tell me what you know."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ironically, this quotation is itself routinely taken out of context, as it was being applied specifically to writers who fall back on quotation when discussing the subject of immortality.
Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#13"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Not Gandhi
Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#14It's not only quotation websites. In Germany "If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter" is a well-known quote from Goethe - except that it isn't from Goethe. To the best of my knowledge it is from Blaise Pascal and it took me about an hour of research to be confident enough use the quote with this attribution. This was way too much time spent for a simple quotation, so my question is: Is there a reli…
It's attributed to Pascal in Robert McKee's screenwriting manual (without a reference); had no idea about the Goethe thing.
Did you find a more reliable citation for it, out of curiosity?
Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#15Though it may seem fallacious, information garnered through the interweb is commonly infallible. -Abraham Lincoln Edit: Honestly, downvote this. HN is better than stupid, panderous posts like this.
Seriously? It's actually by Oscar Wilde.
Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#16Though it may seem fallacious, information garnered through the interweb is commonly infallible. -Abraham Lincoln Edit: Honestly, downvote this. HN is better than stupid, panderous posts like this.
I wouldn't exactly say it's irrelevant. It can be a good way of showing how easy it is to just make up quotes in a very obvious way, but I would be lying if I said it wasn't a bit overused on some sites.
Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#17If you create a website with wrongly attributed quotes Google will pick it up. And the more people complain and link to your website as incorrect the more popular it will get and eventually people just start making memes and sharing on all social networks and then the quotes becomes true in the eyes of the googlers.
If enough people say that the quote is attributed to the wrong person then does it become fact like the redefinition of "literally"?
Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#18Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#19It's not only quotation websites. In Germany "If I Had More Time, I Would Have Written a Shorter Letter" is a well-known quote from Goethe - except that it isn't from Goethe. To the best of my knowledge it is from Blaise Pascal and it took me about an hour of research to be confident enough use the quote with this attribution. This was way too much time spent for a simple quotation, so my question is: Is there a reli…
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is one of the classic gold standards. It's reasonably well-sourced, and it separates out "attributed" but uncomfirmed remarks. It's not as comprehensive as the online sites, since it's edited as a physical book, but it's pretty reliable:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett%27s_Familiar_Quotatio...
It's an American work, so I don't have a good sense for how well it covers other regions' quotations.
Re: Don’t believe quotation websites
#20WikiQuote is quite reliable, despite what you'd think. If I hear a quote and want to know who actually said it, WikiQuote usually has the answer, or can at least tell me it was misattributed.