A misquote is not a line you dislike, and it is not a translation that sounds modern. In this library it is a narrower thing. The badge Misattributed means the familiar sentence was not said or written by the person on the poster. The note has to say why. If the note cannot say why, the line does not belong under that badge. The other three badges exist so that doubt is not forced into a single bin. This guide uses only those badges and only lines the library already files. It does not estimate how much of the internet is fake. It has no such count.
The five badges
Well attested means the sentence is securely the author’s, in their own language, or a close standard translation of a specific passage. Paraphrase or translation means the thought is in the source, but the English is a translation, a freer rendering, or a shortened form of a longer passage. Summary means the card restates the argument and is shown without quotation marks. Questionable means there is a real doubt: the wording is late, the book’s authorship is disputed, or the line is only an anecdote. Misattributed means the sentence was not theirs. Those labels are the About page, not a looser habit. When you check a line, you are choosing among them. You are not awarding a vibe.
The common mistake is to treat paraphrase as fraud. Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations in Greek. A card that quotes Gregory Hays’s English of 2002 and marks it Paraphrase or translation is doing the honest thing. Calling that card fake would be a second error. The common mistake in the other direction is to treat a smooth English sentence as his because it is old and stern. Age is not a source. A named work, a section, and a translator are a source.
A way to check
Start with the work, not the person. If the sentence cannot be pointed at a book, a letter, a notebook, or a reported passage with a citation, stop. “Everyone knows” is not a citation. Next, ask whether the English is a translation, and whose. If the card names Kaufmann, Hays, Long, O’Brien, Gilbert, Ward, or Bower, you are reading that translator’s choices as well as the author’s. Next, look at the century. A line that sounds like a twentieth-century poster and is attributed to an ancient author has to survive that surprise. It sometimes does. Often the note says it does not. Last, read the neighbouring sentences. The library’s philosopher pages keep saying this about Marcus and Nietzsche: the famous clause is the start of a paragraph, or one move in an aphorism. A clause that only works after you delete the next sentence is not yet understood, even when the attribution is clean.
None of those steps requires a special archive on the first pass. They require you not to skip the note. The sourcing page says how the levels were set and where to write if a citation looks wrong. The misquote detector is the same stack turned into a game: genuine, paraphrased, or misattributed. Questionable lines, and summaries, are left out of that game on purpose, so the three buttons match three of the badges and do not pretend the doubtful case is easy.
Lines this library marks Misattributed
Read the note on the card, then the sentence. The order matters. If you fall for the sentence first, you will argue with the note. The notes below are the library’s, not a retelling from memory.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Voltaire · Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire (1906), under the pseudonym S. G. Tallentyre
Misattributed
Hall wrote this as an illustration of Voltaire's attitude, not as a sentence from him. It does not appear in his letters or works. The attitude it sketches is related to arguments he did make for toleration. The words are hers.
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. Evelyn Beatrice Hall wrote this in 1906, as S. G. Tallentyre, to illustrate Voltaire's attitude. It does not appear in his letters. A rival reading says she caught his spirit, so the quotation marks are a venial sin. A summary of someone's spirit, once it is in quotation marks, starts a second life as a fake. The idea, that disapproval and a right can coexist, can be argued. It cannot be footnoted to him.
Open the card“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
Aristotle · Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (1926), summarising Aristotle
Misattributed
Will Durant wrote this in The Story of Philosophy as his own summary of Aristotle's ethics. Aristotle's actual claim, in Nicomachean Ethics II.1, is that we become just by doing just acts. The famous wording is Durant's, and it is an intelligent paraphrase, not a quotation.
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. Will Durant wrote this in 1926 as his own summary of Aristotle's ethics. Aristotle's claim, in Nicomachean Ethics II.1, is that we become just by doing just acts. A rival reading says the attribution does not matter because the summary is intelligent and the practice is right. The practice can be kept. The citation cannot. A good paraphrase promoted to a quotation teaches people that fame is a source. Durant was teaching a true Aristotelian idea.
Open the card“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
Friedrich Nietzsche · No work by Nietzsche
Misattributed
Quotation researchers have not found this in Nietzsche's books or notebooks. It circulates as a poster line. The tone, dancers misunderstood by the unmusical, is a twentieth-century picture of the eccentric, not a section of The Gay Science. His real line about music is a different sentence and is sourced.
The poster says the dancers look mad only because the watchers cannot hear the music. It is a defence of the misunderstood eccentric. A rival reading says the sentiment is kind, so the false name does no harm. The name does the harm. It borrows a philosopher who distrusted pity and herd taste in order to bless a sentimental scene he did not write. Researchers have not found it in the books or the notebooks. It circulates because it sounds like a genius defending art.
Open the card“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Carl Sagan · Sharon Begley, Newsweek, 1977, writing about Sagan; not a sentence he published
Misattributed
Quote researchers trace this sentence to Sharon Begley's 1977 Newsweek article about Sagan, not to a line in Cosmos, Broca's Brain, or The Demon-Haunted World. It sounds like his wonder. It is a reporter's sentence. Do not cite it as his.
The line is a fair description of a mood people associate with him, and it is not a sentence he is shown to have written. Begley's 1977 article is the source that keeps turning up when the wording is hunted. A competing habit, very common, prints it under his name because the star-stuff narration is nearby in spirit. Spirit is not a citation. His own wonder is on the cards for Cosmos and Pale Blue Dot, in words he did say. This one stays Misattributed so the real sentences are not diluted by a caption.
Open the cardNotice that the notes do not all fail in the same way. One line was written by a reporter about the person. One is a modern proverb in an old costume. One is a biographer’s sentence later shortened into the subject’s mouth. The Sagan card is the cleanest lesson of the set: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known” is filed as Sharon Begley, Newsweek, 1977, writing about Sagan, not a sentence he published. If you remember it as his voice, the memory is of a profile, not of his book. That is why the badge exists. It is also why a single rule, “if it sounds like him, it is him,” does not work. Begley’s sentence sounded like the public idea of him. That was the problem.
Questionable is not the same failure
Nietzsche’s “There are no facts, only interpretations” is not on the misattributed list. The card marks it Questionable and places it in an unpublished notebook of 1886–87, printed as The Will to Power §481. A notebook can be his and still be a bad thing to quote as a finished doctrine. The library refuses to promote that doubt into a flat “he never wrote it,” and it refuses to promote the notebook into a book. If your test only has two outcomes, real and fake, you will get this card wrong. The badges are there so you do not have to.
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
Friedrich Nietzsche · Unpublished notebook, 1886–87, printed as The Will to Power §481
Questionable
A notebook fragment compiled after his death by editors using his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche's archive. The neat English shortens a longer note. It is not a published sentence. Do not treat The Will to Power as a finished book he wrote. The published remark about perspective 'knowing' is a different, securer text.
The neat English says there are no facts, only interpretations. The note is a fragment from 1886–87, shortened by editors, and printed in The Will to Power, which is not a book he finished. A rival reading treats the line as his epistemology, a published doctrine that facts are illusions. That use ignores the archive, the sister's role, and the longer German. Another reading, trying to be careful, throws out every sceptical remark he did publish.
Open the cardWhat to do next
Pick one line you have repeated. Find it in the library or fail to find it. If it is missing, do not invent a source to calm the itch. If it is here, read the badge, the work, and the note, and only then the meaning. The meaning is a common reading for study. It is not a second citation. Then try the misquote detector, which keeps a score on this device and does not send it anywhere. The critical thinking test is a different exercise. It asks you to name fallacies and biases and to weigh arguments. Spotting a misquote is one skill inside a larger one. It is not the whole test, and the test is not a certificate.