Quote Generator
- "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." (Chinese proverb)
The quote generator draws from 12 quotations, each carrying its source. Where an attribution is contested the entry says "attributed to" rather than stating it as fact. Three of the twelve are marked that way, because misattribution is the normal condition of quotations that circulate online.
How it works
Each entry pairs the text with the most defensible attribution available, and flags the ones that cannot be sourced to a specific work.
- Sourced to a named work: Marcus Aurelius in Meditations, Socrates in Plato’s Apology.
- Sourced to a person without a specific work: Nelson Mandela, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
- Marked "attributed to": three quotations widely credited to Einstein with no primary source.
- Proverbs with no individual author, labelled by tradition rather than person.
Examples
A single quote
How many
1
Result
"The obstacle is the way.", Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
The named work is included because it exists and can be checked, which is the difference between a citation and a caption.
A disputed attribution
How many
3
Result
One of the three may read: "A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.", attributed to Albert Einstein
This one appears in no published work of Einstein’s. It is marked as attributed rather than being presented as a direct quotation.
Frequently asked questions
Why do some quotes say "attributed to" instead of naming the author outright?
Because those quotations cannot be traced to anything the named person wrote or is recorded as saying. Einstein, Twain and Churchill attract misattributions in particular, a striking line with no clear origin tends to drift towards a famous name. Saying "attributed to" is the honest version.
Can I use these quotes commercially?
The quotations here are old enough or short enough that copyright is not usually the issue; correct attribution is. Check the source yourself before printing anything, especially the three marked as attributed.
Why only twelve quotes?
Because each one was checked. A list of a thousand scraped quotations would be larger and substantially wrong, and a quote generator that spreads misattributions is worse than no quote generator.