[gruseom]

Hey, this isn't a competition. We're just talking about an interesting historical question.

Maybe one point deserves clarification.

When you Google an authentic quote by a very famous person, a precise textual citation is usually locatable through one of the top results (or something it links to). Therefore, when you Google a quote by a very famous person and nothing but quotespam sites come up, the quote is probably bogus.

I've never seen an authentic quote that fails this test. If anyone can find one -- that is, find a quote by a very famous person, the first page of Google results for which is all quotespam, but which nevertheless is an authentic quote as proven by a real textual reference -- I would like to see it.

[nl]

Searching books.google.com for the quote is very useful too.

[gruseom]

Indeed it is, especially with the inauthor tag, as in:

  inauthor:"Isaac Newton"

Google Books is an amazing resource. Would there were a way to get the full text of everything.