Quote Origins

Many famous quotes are passed around without their origin, and some end up credited to someone who never said them. Wherever we can, we show where a quote was first written or spoken: the book, speech, letter or interview, with the year, and a link to the evidence.

You'll see one of these labels beside a quote once it has been checked:

• Verified source A published citation pinpoints where the author wrote or said it. The citation is shown with the quote.
• Paraphrase The idea is the author's, but the popular wording isn't theirs: it has been altered from the original.
• Disputed The quote is widely credited to this person, but no reliable source from their lifetime has been found.
• Misattributed The quote is commonly credited to this person, but the evidence shows it isn't theirs.

Quotes without a label haven't been checked yet, or no reliable record was found either way.

How we check

Each quote is compared with the sourced, disputed and misattributed entries for its author on Wikiquote, a free reference that records the source of each quotation and the research behind it. A label is only added when the wording clearly matches; close calls are reviewed by hand. The "evidence" link next to each citation opens the page it came from. Wikiquote content is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

If you know where a quote comes from, or think a label is wrong, tell us.