Quote collections are handy tools for speakers who like to spice their presentations with pithy comments by Winston Churchill, Confucius, Amelia Earhart, and other famous, not-so-famous, and even infamous figures. But avoid using quote compilations when you’re writing. If you absolutely must resort to one, do so advisedly and sparingly. Rarely if ever should you cite it in your notes.
There are three reasons why, unlike enhancing your presentation as a speaker, quote compilations can undermine you as a writer.
1. Many of them are inaccurate. Internet compilations are notorious for misquotes and misattributions. They can make a good starting point for you to look into the documentation you need for source notes–but you’ve got to take it further. Do a little research and you may find the same popular quote attributed to various different people and bearing only a resemblance to what was actually said.
2. You’ve got to document your sources with complete publishing information, and quote collections don’t provide such information. They show a quote and its purported author and, if the quote came from a book, possibly the book’s title. That’s fine when you’re speaking–but not when you’re writing.
Herein lies one of the marked differences between public speaking and writing. In speaking, it’s enough to say, “Was it not So-and-So who said, ‘Such and such,'” and move on from there. A quote in that context flies by in a moment, and your listeners are unlikely to vet it for accuracy. But in a book, you need more detailed source documentation, and it has to be reliable.
Source notes are far too big a topic to tackle here. It’s enough to say that Goodreads doesn’t meet the requirement. Neither do quotes taken from blogs and other informal online writing. You can quote a blogger’s own words, but don’t quote his or her quote of some famous person and then cite the blog as your source; the blogger may well have used one of the same unreliable collections you need to avoid, thus propagating the inaccuracies.
3. Finally, there’s the no-small-matter of credibility. A quote taken straight from its original source or, if necessary, from a trustworthy secondary source, and cited according the niceties of the Chicago Manual of Style, tells your readers that you’re well read. Quotes taken from Brainyquotes, on the other hand, can give a less favorable impression, and a publishing house editor may reject your manuscript based on inadequate documentation.
So What’s the Solution?
If you like to quote Mark Twain, read his writings. If Lincoln is your guy, read books about Lincoln or visit well-researched websites that provide his speeches and letters. As much as possible, go to the headwaters. And keep a notebook to record not only quotes you like but also where you got them from, so you can access their sources easily should you need their publishing information.
If you want to quote a saying of dubious origins, and if after doing your homework you simply can’t find anything definitive on its exact wording or its source, just say so. For example: “The wise words ‘If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything,’ popularly attributed to Alexander Hamilton, apply here.” That little qualifier, “popularly attributed to,” serves as your disclaimer. (By the way, this example is based on a discussion in Quote Investigator [https://quoteinvestigator.com/]. The site is a great online resource for exploring the origins and wordings of sayings.)
The underlying concern in all of the above is simply this: quotes in print need to be word-for-word accurate; their attributions need to be correct; and the notes for your citations need to be complete, trustworthy, and as close to the original source as you can get. In this less-than-perfect world, sometimes you have to go with secondhand sources, (e.g., “Madame Currie, as quoted in . . .”) Just make sure those secondary sources are credible and that you’ve done your homework and documented them properly. Quote collections normally should be no more than a springboard for researching a saying, not a source you cite in your endnotes.