5 ms·

Don’t believe quotation websites

77 points by luu 11y ago

LeonM 11y ago
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed
- wodenokoto 11y ago
  I always considered that quote something the rest of the world made up in jest, because in retrospect, that wasn't enough memory and it was annoying. im kinda surprised people apparently think it is something anybody ever actually said.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
    And if anyone said it, it wouldn't be Bill Gates, because it wasn't Microsoft who set the memory limits of the IBM PC.
jetskindo 11y ago
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.
- sosuke 11y ago
  If enough people say that the quote is attributed to the wrong person then does it become fact like the redefinition of "literally"?
  - JadeNB 11y ago
    > If enough people say that the quote is attributed to the wrong person then does it become fact like the redefinition of "literally"? I think that's funny as a question, but has the wrong premise. There is no 'actual' meaning of words; they have meaning only by mass human consensus. (What is the actual meaning of 'flumbiliable'?) By contrast, there is an 'actual' first utterer of a quote, whether or not there is any consensus on his or her identity. (I suppose that you could argue, though, that it is only mass observation of a quote that makes it a quote per se, rather than just something I said; if I mutter something under my breath, and it later occurs as a widely quoted line in a movie, then should it be attributed to me, to the screenwriter, or to the character who said it?)
dang 11y ago
But do trust this one, it's fab: http://quoteinvestigator.com http://quoteinvestigator.com. I mean the top post there right now is that "a million deaths is a statistic" traces to Beilby Porteus, a classics scholar from 1759. How can you beat that? Also, Wikiquote is good as a base.
bcook 11y ago
Though 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.
- pluma 11y ago
  Seriously? It's actually by Oscar Wilde.
  - coldcode 11y ago
    From a tweet by him so it's probably fake.
    - dmichulke 11y ago
      I hear his account got hacked but I don't know whether it was before the quote or before the denial
- yesco 11y ago
  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.
Tomte 11y ago
There's a book that only includes researched and vetted quotations: Respectfully quoted: A dictionary of quotations requested from the Congressional Research Service
manandvaneurope 11y ago
I know most people don't trust quotation websites but I found a great Man and Van Removals Company http://wjmtransport.co.uk http://wjmtransport.co.uk and received a great free no obligation quote so I think it's a good idea to get quotes from these websites.
weinzierl 11y ago
It'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 reliable canonical source for quotations? Maybe something good journalists use? I know there are several quotation dictionaries but are they any good?
- nitrogen 11y ago
  A friend of mine curated a couple hundred pages worth of quotations with citations to original works into a book called Quotes of Note: Brilliant Thoughts Arranged by Subject (there's another Quotes of Note that came later and is probably a TM violation). It's on Amazon.
  - huxley 11y ago
    IANAL and off-topic, but if it was a series title, your friend might have a case but, at least in North America, the titles of single works are generally not protectable under trademark law. If the book became strongly associated with your friend, then a consumer protection exemption under "Passing Off" rules might allow the work to be protected but the onus would be on your friend to prove it.
    - nitrogen 11y ago
      My friend's book is indeed a series with different formats and updated editions. The challenge is getting Amazon to care.
- thomasahle 11y ago
  Interesting. I've always heard that quote ascribed to Niels Bohr. Perhaps he was just the first Dane to use it. I guess in older times, you could get credit for a quote if you were the first in a country to use it. From http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ it looks like Benjamin Franklin was among the first Americans. But then again, what can we really trust? Maybe we should just attribute all quotes to Mark Twain and be done with it.
danieltillett 11y ago
"If you have heard of the person to whom the quote is attributed then it is wrong." - Moses
RyanMcGreal 11y ago
"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.
dmd76 11y ago
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Not Gandhi
- dang 11y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678282
TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
WikiQuote 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.
yann63 11y ago
"Ceci n'est pas une citation" - René Magritte ("this is not a quote")
- huac 11y ago
  though, in magritte's case, the visual-linguistic paradox is central; to claim that a picture of a pipe is not a pipe requires the pipe to exist as a physical, real object. in this case, a citation is a linguistic creation, which can be faked but cannot exist as the real. </nerdrant>
bshimmin 11y ago
Relatedly, Martin Porter (of Porter stemmer fame) has a great pair of essays on the famous Burke quote about the triumph of evil (which, of course, he never said), starting with http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html

77 points by luu 11y ago

LeonM 11y ago

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates#Misattributed
wodenokoto 11y ago
I always considered that quote something the rest of the world made up in jest, because in retrospect, that wasn't enough memory and it was annoying. im kinda surprised people apparently think it is something anybody ever actually said.
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago
  And if anyone said it, it wouldn't be Bill Gates, because it wasn't Microsoft who set the memory limits of the IBM PC.

jetskindo 11y ago

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.

sosuke 11y ago
If enough people say that the quote is attributed to the wrong person then does it become fact like the redefinition of "literally"?
- JadeNB 11y ago
  > If enough people say that the quote is attributed to the wrong person then does it become fact like the redefinition of "literally"? I think that's funny as a question, but has the wrong premise. There is no 'actual' meaning of words; they have meaning only by mass human consensus. (What is the actual meaning of 'flumbiliable'?) By contrast, there is an 'actual' first utterer of a quote, whether or not there is any consensus on his or her identity. (I suppose that you could argue, though, that it is only mass observation of a quote that makes it a quote per se, rather than just something I said; if I mutter something under my breath, and it later occurs as a widely quoted line in a movie, then should it be attributed to me, to the screenwriter, or to the character who said it?)

dang 11y ago

But do trust this one, it's fab: http://quoteinvestigator.com http://quoteinvestigator.com. I mean the top post there right now is that "a million deaths is a statistic" traces to Beilby Porteus, a classics scholar from 1759. How can you beat that? Also, Wikiquote is good as a base.

bcook 11y ago

Though 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.

pluma 11y ago
Seriously? It's actually by Oscar Wilde.
- coldcode 11y ago
  From a tweet by him so it's probably fake.
  - dmichulke 11y ago
    I hear his account got hacked but I don't know whether it was before the quote or before the denial
yesco 11y ago
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.

Tomte 11y ago

There's a book that only includes researched and vetted quotations: Respectfully quoted: A dictionary of quotations requested from the Congressional Research Service

manandvaneurope 11y ago

I know most people don't trust quotation websites but I found a great Man and Van Removals Company http://wjmtransport.co.uk http://wjmtransport.co.uk and received a great free no obligation quote so I think it's a good idea to get quotes from these websites.

weinzierl 11y ago

It'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 reliable canonical source for quotations? Maybe something good journalists use? I know there are several quotation dictionaries but are they any good?

nitrogen 11y ago
A friend of mine curated a couple hundred pages worth of quotations with citations to original works into a book called Quotes of Note: Brilliant Thoughts Arranged by Subject (there's another Quotes of Note that came later and is probably a TM violation). It's on Amazon.
- huxley 11y ago
  IANAL and off-topic, but if it was a series title, your friend might have a case but, at least in North America, the titles of single works are generally not protectable under trademark law. If the book became strongly associated with your friend, then a consumer protection exemption under "Passing Off" rules might allow the work to be protected but the onus would be on your friend to prove it.
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    My friend's book is indeed a series with different formats and updated editions. The challenge is getting Amazon to care.
thomasahle 11y ago
Interesting. I've always heard that quote ascribed to Niels Bohr. Perhaps he was just the first Dane to use it. I guess in older times, you could get credit for a quote if you were the first in a country to use it. From http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/ it looks like Benjamin Franklin was among the first Americans. But then again, what can we really trust? Maybe we should just attribute all quotes to Mark Twain and be done with it.

danieltillett 11y ago

"If you have heard of the person to whom the quote is attributed then it is wrong." - Moses

RyanMcGreal 11y ago

"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.

dmd76 11y ago

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." - Not Gandhi

dang 11y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=678282

TazeTSchnitzel 11y ago

WikiQuote 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.

yann63 11y ago

"Ceci n'est pas une citation" - René Magritte ("this is not a quote")

huac 11y ago
though, in magritte's case, the visual-linguistic paradox is central; to claim that a picture of a pipe is not a pipe requires the pipe to exist as a physical, real object. in this case, a citation is a linguistic creation, which can be faked but cannot exist as the real. </nerdrant>

bshimmin 11y ago

Relatedly, Martin Porter (of Porter stemmer fame) has a great pair of essays on the famous Burke quote about the triumph of evil (which, of course, he never said), starting with http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html http://tartarus.org/martin/essays/burkequote.html