[WEB4LIB] Quotation stumper

[Patricia F Anderson]

I'm with Bernie on this one! The racism quote in particular seems to get
the largest amount of press from folks perpetuating what may not even be a
real quote by trying to prove it exists! :-)

http://www.cuis.edu/ftp/STUMPERS-L/STUMPERS-L.1998-11

Definitely has stumped the folks at stumpers ...

Generally, I have had amazing success with verifying quotations. I'm
working on a book in which I use quotations to introduce sections. Being
compulsive <g>, I of course couldn't just take someone else's word for it,
I had to verify each and every blasted snippet or find a new one that fit.
There was one quote from Ursula LeGuin that took me weeks to verify
(turned out to be in a speech she gave at Bryn Mawr), and I almost wrote
and asked her! I am extremely fond of:

  http://quotations.bartleby.com

Which wasn't much help with these, but was with the LeGuin quote! I also
(and am sure you already tried this) play with various combinations of
words in various search engines using phrase grouping as appropriate.

Good luck!

Pat Anderson, pfa at umich.edu

On Mon, 3 Jun 2002, Tomaiuolo, Nicholas (Library) wrote:

> Web4Lib and Libref readers,
> A reference librarian posted the query below to LIBREF.  What a coincidence
> -- the same queries had been asked for several weeks on answers.google.com
> the Google requestor offered $50 for the answer to each question. The
> questions have now "expired" on Google's Answers.
>
> Dear LibRefers,
>
>   A patron has asked where the following two (different) quotes originated
>
>   1) "We learn not from experience, but from experiment."
>
>   2) "Racism is too serious a charge to require evidence" or "the charge of
> racism is too serious to need the
>   support of evidence"
>
>   I found a couple that might be appropriate for the first one, but I'm
> hitting a brick wall for the second.  Does
>   anyone out there recognize them.  Any help will be appreciated.
>
>
>   Plano Public Library System
>   Plano, TX
>