As the great sixteenth century French philosopher and essayist, Michel de Montaigne (above), said, “I quote others only in order the better to express myself”.
On the other hand, Voltaire observed, “A witty saying proves nothing”. So, you takes your pick.
I use Wikiquote to verify quotations and attributions. It is by far the least unreliable source of quotations with correct attributions. Quote investigator is another site fighting the good fight to correctly attribute quotations.
In the pages on this website, I only give unsourced quotations if I am reasonably sure that the claimed author was, in fact, the author. Inevitably, websites are dynamic: sometimes, I cannot now find an attribution, say on Wikiquote, which was there when I collected the quotation. I don’t have time to be forever checking attributions—and Wikiquote is not at all necessarily right—so I give attributions in good faith: they seemed to be correct at the time I created the page (and they are vastly less inaccurate than most sites’).
emotional intelligence at work does not necessarily subscribe to the views expressed in these quotations.
But then, nor do the authors. Quotations taken from plays, poems, songs, novels and so on can be assumed to be as uttered from the mouths of characters invented by the writer and therefore not necessarily expressing the writer’s personality or opinion.
Related material:
> blog: Quote? Unquote
