If you heard a quote you liked, you looked for it in one of those big books of quotations (such as Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations or the Yale Book of Quotations), and if it wasn’t in there, only the brave or intrepid would keep searching.

Luckily, there are both brave and intrepid souls in the world, and they’ve made pretty massive collections of quotes… and their attributions.

Now, of course, we have internet searching–which effectively opens up a LOT of books for access…. as well as a good deal of fake quotes, incorrect attributions, and general nonsense.

Here’s a good one in that vein:

And as we learned in this week’s post about 18th century fake news, it’s sometimes hard to figure out who said something, especially if they’re trying to cover their tracks!

So this week, we’ll tackle this topic head on, and see if we can’t run down some famous quotes and figure out who actually said (or wrote) them in the first place.

1. Did Tom Peters, the guru of excellence, really say “The best search one can do today is the search for excellence”?

2. Did Mark Twain say that one should “Put All Your Eggs in One Basket, and then watch that basket”?

3. Who said that “College contains daily exercises in delayed gratification. ‘Discuss early modern European print culture”’will never beat ‘Sing karaoke with friends’ in a straight fight, but in the long run, having a passable Rhianna impression will be a less useful than understanding how media revolutions unfold”?

4. (Extra credit) Who said or wrote that “It is better than 1000 guilty persons should escape than one innocent suffer”?

As always, we’re interested not just in the answer, but HOW you figured these out. What special machinations of your brain and mind did you suffer to get to the bottom of the barrel of sources?

What tips and tricks should one know when seeking out the truth about original sayings?

Teach us, and we’ll all know!

Search for those quotes. Or as I always say (although it did not originate with me):

“Search on!”