Quote Investigator
A research tradition (and a well-known website) devoted to tracing the true origin of famous quotations.
Quote Investigator is both a website (run by Garson O'Toole) and a broader research practice devoted to tracing the true origin of widely-quoted lines. The work involves digging through old newspapers, journals, books, and letters to find the earliest verifiable use of a phrase — and the often-surprising figure who actually said it.
The investigator tradition is the antidote to viral misattribution. Many famous lines attributed to Einstein, Twain, Lincoln, Churchill, and Gandhi did not originate with them, and a careful Quote Investigator-style search can usually surface the real author.
On Mr. B Quotes, we lean on this tradition. When attribution is uncertain, we say so — and we link to the earliest defensible source we can find.
“"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results." — Not by Einstein.”
Keep reading the glossary
Assigning a quote to the wrong person — the most common error in quotation.
The original record of a quote — the book, letter, speech, or recording in which it first appeared.
A quote attributed to a famous person that they almost certainly never said.
A 2,000-year-old practice of distilling ethical instruction into short, repeatable lines.