How We Verify Every Quote
Graham, an executive coach, had just landed his dream client. For his first session with senior partners, he opened his presentation with an inspiring Churchill quote—one he’d found on a popular quote website. Within seconds, a senior partner raised a hand. The quote was fake. Churchill never said it. The room shifted. If Graham couldn’t be trusted to verify a simple quote, could he be trusted with anything else? It was a painful start to what should have been a career-defining moment.
Stories like Graham’s are more common than you’d think, and they’re exactly why Intelligent Quotes exists. Our mission is simple: help writers, researchers, and speakers publish and present with confidence by making sure every quote they use is real.
How we verify quotes
Every quote on our site has been manually checked by a human against its source. We don’t rely on other quote collections or secondhand attributions. We want to see the quote with our own eyes in a credible source before we consider it verified.
Each quote is assigned to one of three source categories. A primary source is a direct, credible source such as a book written by the person themselves, with no intermediary. A secondary source is a credible source that quotes the person indirectly, such as a published interview or a biography. A disputed label is applied when we have been unable to identify a credible primary or secondary source despite thorough research. Quote collections, unless they cite a verifiable source, are not considered credible.
Roughly 90% of our quotes are backed by a primary source, 5% by a secondary source, and 5% are marked as disputed.
Why we include disputed quotes
Some disputed quotes are so widely circulated that their absence would feel like an oversight. Others are compelling lines that have simply been attributed to the wrong person. Rather than omit them or—worse—present them as verified, we include a small number of disputed quotes and label them clearly. That way, you know exactly what you’re working with and can avoid the kind of mistake Graham made.
As for Graham—he replaced the fake Churchill quote with a verified one he found on Intelligent Quotes. He liked it even better. He read the source summary, understood where the quote came from, and walked into his next session ready to present with confidence. This time, when someone asked about the quote, he had the answer.