Probably the most famous source of historical quotes is “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” which was first published in 1855 and updated frequently, as recently as 2003. John Bartlett, who ran the University Bookstore in Cambridge, Massachusetts, published the first edition of his book using a collection of quotes he had assembled over the years in response to requests from his customers. The first edition of his book contained mostly quotes from the Bible, Shakespeare and the English Poets. In subsequent editions, it has been expanded to include quotes from a much wider range of personalities, including politicians, contemporary writers, and utterings from icons of pop culture.

Besides “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations” there are now many reference sources for quotations available to the average reader or researcher. With the explosion of the internet, almost every word that has ever been written can be found with diligent searching. If you get a song lyric stuck in your head, or a line from a movie or television show, and you want to find out who said it or what song it came from before it drives you nuts thinking about it for days on end, you can simply type the line or quote into your favorite search engine. Almost without fail, the mysterious wizards of cyberspace will cough up the exact information you are looking for in only a fraction of a second.

Using a good search engine is also a good way to check on the veracity of information that may be presented to you as historical fact. Especially with modern viral e-mail, it is easy for distortions, half-truths, and outright lies to be circulated as fact. So, it is a good idea to check by inserting the text of the email into a search engine and letting it go to work uncovering the real facts behind the words.