How we verify
A quote without a source is a rumour with good grammar.
Most quotation sites publish whatever circulates. The result is an internet full of wisdom wearing the wrong name — Einstein credited with recovery-group sayings, Gandhi with slogans he never wrote, Voltaire with a sentence composed by his biographer. We would rather be slower and right.
Three labels, used consistently
Sourced means we can point to the work it came from — a named book, letter, or speech. Attributed means the line is widely credited to that person but we could not confirm a primary source, or the attribution is disputed; we print the label rather than hiding the doubt. Misattributed is reserved for The Record, where researchers have searched the person's works, come up empty, and usually traced the wording somewhere else entirely.
What counts as evidence
A primary text outranks everything. After that we rely on specialist reference works and quotation researchers — Quote Investigator, the Yale Book of Quotations, scholarly compilations such as The Ultimate Quotable Einstein — and on reporting that cites those sources. A chain of websites quoting each other is not evidence, however long the chain is.
Why this matters for a learner
Because you will repeat these lines. Quoting confidently and being corrected is a small, avoidable humiliation, and it is one that falls hardest on people speaking a second language, who are already being judged more harshly than they deserve. Knowing that a line is folk wisdom rather than Einstein is exactly the kind of detail that makes you sound like someone who knows the language well.
Questions about our method
We look for a primary source: a specific book, letter, speech, or interview with a date and a locatable passage. If a line can only be traced to other websites and quote aggregators, with no original work named, we treat it as unverified and label it as attributed rather than presenting it as fact.
It means the quote is widely credited to that person but we could not confirm a primary source, or scholars dispute it. The wording may still be valuable; the authorship is uncertain, and we say so rather than quietly passing the doubt on to you.
It means researchers have looked for the quote in the person's works and not found it, and in most cases have traced the wording to a different origin. We name the sources we relied on at the foot of every investigation so you can check our reasoning.
No. We publish quotations as they appear in the source we cite. Where a famous version is a shortened paraphrase of a longer original, we say so and show what the original actually said.
Today's Thought in English is an independent project. Reflections and lesson material are written in-house; every quotation carries its source, and every investigation carries its citations and the date it was last reviewed.
If we get something wrong we fix the page and update its review date. If you have a primary source that contradicts something we published, please send it to us — evidence is welcome, and correcting the record is the entire point of this section.