404·Quotes

404 Quotes / Before you print it

For invitations, cards, speeches and stones

Check it before you print it

Before a quotation goes on an invitation, a card, an order of service or a gravestone, two things are worth checking: who really said it, and whether the words are theirs. Paste it into the Quote Checker, or start from one of the rooms below, where every line carries its source.

Open the Quote Checker →

Start from the occasion

Often printed under another name

Lines that turn up on cards and in speeches with a name the record does not support. Each links to the page with the evidence.

  • “People will forget what you said and did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.”
    Often printed as: Maya Angelou

    Angelou made the line famous, but a close version predates her: Carl W. Buehner, quoted in Richard Evans’ Quote Book (1971).

    In the Kindness room →

  • “Do one thing every day that scares you.”
    Often printed as: Eleanor Roosevelt

    Not found in Eleanor Roosevelt's writing. The earliest known source is Mary Schmich's Chicago Tribune column of 1 June 1997.

    The exhibit →

  • “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
    Often printed as: Oscar Wilde

    Not found in Wilde's works. The earliest known source is an anonymous Usenet post of December 1999, a century after his death.

    The exhibit →

  • “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
    Often printed as: Confucius

    Not found in Confucius. The line is Oliver Goldsmith's, in letter VII of The Citizen of the World, written in the voice of a Chinese philosopher.

    The exhibit →

  • “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
    Often printed as: Mark Twain

    Not found in Twain. The earliest strong match is a 1970 sermon by the minister Ernest T. Campbell, who presented it as something that “has been said”.

    The investigation →

  • “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do.”
    Often printed as: Mark Twain

    Not found in Twain. Quote Investigator found no trace before 1990, when H. Jackson Brown Jr. published it and credited his mother.

    Mark Twain quotes →

  • “Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
    Often printed as: Mahatma Gandhi

    Not in this form. Gandhi expressed a related idea in different — and more interesting — words.

    The investigation →

  • “Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
    Often printed as: Eleanor Roosevelt / Marilyn Monroe

    Neither. It was written in 1976 by the historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich — who is still with us.

    The investigation →

  • “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
    Often printed as: Aristotle

    Not in Aristotle. Will Durant wrote it in The Story of Philosophy (1926), summing up the Nicomachean Ethics.

    The exhibit →

  • “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
    Often printed as: Albert Einstein

    There is no evidence Einstein ever said or wrote this. It appears long after his death.

    The investigation →

Three habits that keep a printed quote right

Use the name the record supports, and when nobody knows, say so: “Anonymous” is an honest credit. For a translated line, the translator's wording is part of the quotation, so a Greek, Latin or Chinese saying can read quite differently from one book to the next. For a Bible reading, name the translation, because the King James Version and modern versions word the same verse differently.

Questions

How do I check if a quote is real before I print it?

Paste it, or part of it, into the Quote Checker. It matches the line against the 738 quotations this museum has examined and shows the name the record supports, its label and its source. If the line is not in the collection, it says so rather than guessing.

What should go under a quotation on an invitation or a card?

The name the record supports, and, if it helps, the work it comes from. For a translation, the translator matters too; for a Bible verse, the translation (King James Version, New International Version and so on), because the wording differs between them. Where nobody knows who said it, “Anonymous” or “author unknown” is accurate.

What do the labels mean?

“Sourced” means the line is traced to a named work, with chapter, line or date. “Attributed” means it is widely credited but no primary source has been confirmed. “Misattributed” means the record shows it coming from someone else. The full definitions are on the How we check page.

Is a misattributed quote still all right to use?

Many are good lines; what goes wrong is the name. A line can be printed without a name, or with the name the record supports, and it loses nothing.

How a line earns the word “sourced” →

The Forgery Wing: famous lines nobody said →