Questions tagged [quotes]
Use this tag when the question is about whether someone said or wrote a quote.
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Did Rudyard Kipling describe any drink as "from the clippings and shavings of angels' wings"?
Use any search engine with the search query '"from the clippings and shavings of angels' wings" Kipling' and you will find many results. For example:
Rudyard Kipling described the powerful ...
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Did Ayn Rand use the term "ineptocracy"?
"Ineptocracy" as can be googled today is a certain criticism of democracy. One book (titled Far-Right Fantasy: A Sociology of American Religion and Politics) seems to say that Ayn Rand used the term:
...
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Was the debris of a missile presented by India authentic?
In February 2019, Indian officials presented the alleged wreckage of an AIM-120C5 AMRAAM missile as evidence that Pakistan used an F-16 in the shooting down of IAF jets (as only an F-16 could fire ...
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Did Paul Offit, MD, say that aluminum plays an important role in the development of a healthy fetus?
The following quote is attributed to Paul A. Offit, MD, by a number of websites and books; they can be found by Googling for the exact quote in quote marks (screenshot below)
Aluminum is considered ...
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Did the Mayo Clinic in the 1900s find 4-5 quarts (~4 litres) of raw milk a day to be healthy?
According to this claim by realmilk.com,
THE MILK CURE: In the early 1900s, the Mayo Clinic administered the “Milk Cure,” which consisted in drinking 4-5 quarts of raw milk per day, obtaining ...
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Did new Brazilian president Bolsonaro say he'd rather have a dead son than a gay one?
There has been a lot in the global news media recently about the new President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and the highly controversial things he is alleged to have said in the past.
Some quotes are ...
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Did Einstein say: "I'm doing just fine, considering that I have triumphantly survived Nazism and two wives"
The book "How to think like Einstein" (Isbn-13 978-1-4926-2627-5) has a number of quotes in it that are attributed to Albert Einstein
On page 28 of that book, it claims
"Einstein Thinking"
"...
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Authenticity of Quote - Eating with fork and knife like love via interpreter [closed]
I have found on numerous websites the quote "Eating with knives and forks is like making love through an interpreter" attributed to a Shah of Iran.
Is this a genuine quote?
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Did Charles Dickens say “The New Testament is the very best book that ever was or ever will be known in the world.”?
So I know anyone with an internet connection can invent a quote and stick a name next to it. I came across this quote recently and was a little skeptical. I found numerous references but none with ...
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Did Alan Turing ever say “Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine”?
Goodreads lists the quote under Alan Turing but I always thought it was merely from the movie (The Imitation Game) and couldn't find anything similar in his published works
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Did Otto Warburg make this claim about diseases in an alkaline environment?
I came across the following quote, alledgedly by the biochemist Otto Warburg:
No disease, including cancer, can exist in an alkaline environment
or its German counterpart:
Keine Krankheit kann in ...
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1
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Did Trump say “going loco”? [closed]
The following site as well as other websites state that President Trump used the expression “going loco” referring to the Federal Reserve Bank and their interest rate policy.
“The problem I have is ...
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Did Martin Luther King Jr. say "Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis and are responsible for 58% of its crimes?"
According to 54,900 Google results, Martin Luther King Jr. said in 1961:
Do you know that Negroes are 10 percent of the population of St. Louis
and are responsible for 58 percent of its crimes? ...
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Is Youtube primarily a male domain?
This is a quote from Jordan Peterson. I've provided two examples, one in which he qualifies the major viewership as being "young" males, in the other it's a generalised statement about all ...
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Did Lord Kelvin say "If you can not measure it, you can not improve it"?
AZquotes claims that Lord Kelvin (or William Thomson) said this:
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
But there is no such a quote in his Wikiquote page. So did he actually say this?
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Did Senator Biden deny that FBI investigations can add anything to the SCOTUS confirmation process?
On September 27, 2018 at the confirmation hearings for Brett Kavanaugh, during his opening remarks, Senator Grassley claimed that FBI investigations can add nothing to Senate confirmation hearings and ...
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Did a Harvard teacher recommend thanking God to be happier?
I got a WhatsApp chain letter which reproduced the text in this Linked In blog article:
Did you know that at Harvard, one of the most prestigious universities in the world, the most popular and ...
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1
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Did Giordano Bruno say this quote about swimming against the torrent?
I recently saw an image where this quote
Non temete nuotare contro il torrente, è d'un anima sordida pensare come il volgo, perché il volgo è in maggioranza
is attributed to 16th Century Italian ...
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Is the Gregorian calendar the "most accurate calendar ever devised"?
This statement comes from a Joe Rogan show episode where he chats to Neil de Grasse Tyson. His statement is about the Gregorian calendar, and goes as follows:
"Point is, this was hard-earned, and ...
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Is "C'est pour cela que je suis née" a real quote from Joan of Arc?
I have found a very beautiful song, which is part of a soundtrack and numerous people claim that the lyrics consists of several quotes from different people.
One part of it is:
"C'est pour cela que ...
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Did Talleyrand say "If we go on explaining we shall cease to understand one another"?
Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord (a.k.a. Talleyrand) was a French diplomat of the late 18th Century.
A number of websites of quotes (for example: [1], [2], [3]) claim that he said:
"If we go ...
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Neil Armstrong: “One small step for man” or “one small step for a man”?
Today on Facebook the Science Museum (London) posted:
#OTD in 1930 American astronaut and aeronautical engineer Neil Armstrong was born.
In July 1969, Armstrong and Apollo 11 pilot Buzz ...
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Did Francis of Assisi say/write "Start doing what is necessary..."?
“Start doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible” is attributed to St. Francis in thousands of web pages. But books.google.com can't find it in any ...
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Did The Maharal of Prague claim this verse was recursive?
Today I encountered a claim that Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel (known as The Maharal of Prague) said that the statement "So God created mankind in his own image"
So God created mankind in his own ...
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Did Trump muse on the different names for the UK? [closed]
According to an article in The Guardian, the occasion of his visit to the United Kingdom elicited a philosophical thought about its many possible names.
“We would make a great deal with the United ...
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Did Emmanuel Macron call a teenager an "idiot?"
This article from The Telegraph (June 22, 2018) mentions that Emmanuel Macron called the teenager who was not respectful an "idiot"; emphasis is mine:
President Emmanuel Macron is facing ...
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Did the United States Holocaust Museum have a display entitled "Early Warning Signs of Facism"?
I saw this on my Facebook news feed, posted on a page called “Truth in Crisis”. Is this a real display in the United States Holocaust Museum as the post claims? I’m doubtful as a number of them seem ...
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Did Hillary Clinton say that North Korea requires experienced diplomats rather than tweets?
A meme has been making rounds on the internet recently with a quote attributed to Hillary Clinton:
North Korea requires trained and experienced diplomats. Just sending out tweets won't work.
Is it ...
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Did Karl Marx ever say "Life is struggle"?
Ben Horowitz, a venture capitalist, has attributed a quote to Karl Marx on several occasions.
On his blog in 2012:
Life is struggle.
—Karl Marx
In a 2013 tweet.
In his 2014 book, The Hard ...
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Did Marx's mother say she wished he would accumulate capital instead of writing about it?
I have encountered quotes similar to this one on the internet in the past few days, attributed to Karl Marx's mother and referring to him:
I wish you were more interested in accumulating capital ...
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Is this graphic depicting Trump and Hitler accurate?
This graphic has been spreading around social media the last few weeks; its sentiment echoed in USA Today among other places. Snopes has weighed in, but I find the article unsatisfying. It calls the ...
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Did Valerie Jarrett say she wanted "America to be a more Islamic country"?
This picture, being shared on Twitter, alleges that Valerie Jarrett, former Senior Advisor to the President, during the Obama administration, claimed to be of Iranian descent and of Islamic faith in ...
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Did a French encyclopedia make a mistake in its Ivan the Terrible article?
There is a popular anecdote in Russia that a foreign-language encyclopedia (usually Petit Larousse) made a blatant mistake in one of its articles about the Russian Tsar Ivan IV (Ivan the Terrible).
...
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Did Susan B. Anthony make these statements regarding suffrage for women and former slaves?
Telesur posted an article on 8 November 2016 which claims Susan B. Anthony made a number of statements under the headline "White Women Pay Tribute to Susan B. Anthony, Notorious Racist":
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Did Theodor Herzl adhere to Spinozism?
The following are found among a list of Theodor Herzl quotes on the Web site of the World Zionist Organisation:
When I say God I do not mean to offend the freethinkers. For my part
they can say ...
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Did Ben Gurion say this about conquering Palestinian land?
I'm watching a video about the Israel/Palestine situation (supposedly from a reputable source), yet the video so far seem filled with inaccuracies and bias. For the record I'm not a member of either ...
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Did Churchill say he would drink poison tea if he was married to a particular person?
The following quote is very frequently attributed to Churchill responding to Lady Astor:
Lady Astor: If you were my husband, I’d poison your tea.
PM Churchill: Madame, if you were my wife, I’d ...
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Did Thomas Jefferson predict that slavery would split the US?
I was reading about the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens. He made the "Cornerstone Speech" in 1861, about 5 weeks before the Civil War started.
He claimed Thomas Jefferson ...
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Have Putin and his family stolen $300 billion or more from Russians?
During the debates held in the House of Commons on 14th March 2018 about the alleged poisoning of Russian spy Skripal in Salisbury, U.K. Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Thomas Tugendhat ...
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Did Putin threaten to have traitors assassinated?
In the recent U.N. Security Council meeting, U.K. Deputy Ambassador to the United Nations Jonathan Allen quoted Putin by the following words (YouTube link, the relevant part starts at 1:07:30):
...
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Did the former prime minister of UK say this about the Koran?
There was a heated argument between news presenter Piers Morgan and Tommy Robinson. Here is the video for those interested.
He makes a claim:
Sir William Gladstone held this book above his head in ...
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What is the origin of this quote: "Humans live on one-quarter of what they eat; on the other three-quarters lives their doctor."
There is a website about fasting that claims that this quote has been found on an "Egyptian pyramid inscription" in "3800 BC". This makes it extremely dubious: at that time the Egyptians have not yet ...
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Did Einstein reply "Ask Tesla" when asked how it felt to be the smartest man alive?
There is an alleged exchange where Albert Einstein was asked "How does it feel to be the smartest man alive?" to which he allegedly replied "ask Tesla".
Did it really happen?
Sources that make this ...
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Did Trump promise to bring back waterboarding?
According to the Wikipedia article Guantanamo Bay detention camp § President Trump's statements on the camp:
President Donald Trump has vowed to keep the prison open and to use it to detain "bad ...
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Did Maxim Gorky say “The most beautiful words in the English language are 'not guilty'”?
Brainyquote's quote site, attributes this quote to Maxim Gorky:
“The most beautiful words in the English language are 'not guilty'.”
Did he say or write this (or a Russian equivalent)?
If so, ...
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Did Einstein say something about stress and idiots?
There is this quote floating around (got it via Facebook) attributed to Albert Einstein:
„Der Hauptgrund für Stress ist der tägliche Kontakt mit Idioten.“
Which I would translate to:
The main ...
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Did Donald Trump say that the law allowing a baby to be born from his or her mother's womb in the 9th month is wrong?
2 days ago, Twitter user Todd Dracula shared a video from a Donald Trump speech, which can be found at https://twitter.com/ToddDracula/status/954410865993879558.
In it, the President appears to claim:...
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Did doctors/scientists say that breaking the 4-minute mile was impossible?
Roger Bannister's feat of breaking the 4-minute mile is often accompanied with assertions that the scientific community at the time deemed the feat impossible (or, if possible, would be fatally ...
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Did Hitler say "Thank God I've always avoided persecuting my enemies"?
I found an old book called The Bad Guys' Quote Book (by Robert Singer) in a secondhand bookstore.
On the cover there is a quote from Adolph Hitler, which I have also found in other paraphrases:
"...
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Is this quote correctly attributed to Einstein? “Intelligence is not the ability to store information, but to know where to find it.”
Poor Albert Einstein gets attributed many quotes he never uttered. I have a feeling this is one of them, because I couldn't find a proper citation.
Intelligence is not the ability to store ...
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