Is asking which is an accurate original quotation off-topic?

Question

To some extent, I think this was an issue that was raised when this question was trending: When was the first print usage of chop your own wood and it will warm you twice?

Occasionally I've run into similar questions regarding the accurate original version or source of a quote that I've seen that conflicts between sources. It seems to me like a question that has a correct answer, so it's not too broad or primarily opinion based. It can also be a valid question after conducting research. Yet I was thinking about posting such a question and it smelled like something that would be closed fast.

Since I'm here, I'll go ahead and reveal the hypothetical question:

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A Mark Twain quote is shown in various forms, and I'm wondering if one of them is paraphrased and the other is a true quote. As far as I can tell, neither source specifies the text this quote is drawn from, so I'm unsure where to look to verify the accurate original.

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

• Goodreads

Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it.

• BrainyQuote

I promise I'm not fishing for an answer on Meta. Rather, I'm wondering whether questions of this sort are acceptable to the community or if they would or should be closed.

Answer 1

Can't say for sure whether questions of that sort are strictly on-topic at ELU.

Perhaps, if you'd like to know whether a famous quote was misattributed to someone, or challenge the authenticity of something, try Skeptics Stack Exchange. Its Tour page says:

We're working together to build a library of detailed answers challenging unreferenced notable claims, pseudoscience and biased results.

And,

Ask about the accuracy of public claims made in the media or elsewhere.

One of the top used tags is for quotes. Some top voted questions are:

1. Did Einstein say this about his marriage?
2. Did Bill Gates say that vaccines and health care could reduce the population growth by 10-15%?
3. Did Einstein say this quote about war & patriotism?

Answer 2

I would say that they're not necessarily off-topic here. Subject to the usual expectations about doing some research first, I would prefer not to shut these questions out (even if they are potentially also on-topic elsewhere¹). Some reasons for this preference:

1. As noted in the question, these questions are about the usage of the English language; present an actual problem/question; are not primarily opinion based, theoretically have an answer; and can be subjected to the usual due-diligence requirements for research; to ensure they are not easily answered by a standard reference. In other words, they don't clearly violate any of our standard reasons for closing.

2. From a purely subjective viewpoint, I find these questions (or more accurately, their answers) to be interesting.

3. As a site that is partially for etymologists we likely have folks with the expertise and resources to answer these kinds of questions.

4. It's hard to imagine how we would draw the line between etymology of set phrases (which is pretty clearly on-topic) and provenance of unattributed/misattributed "quotations".

   • Does the distinction just turn on whether the line is commonly cited as a quotation? That is, if someone started saying "like Mark Twain once said, 'whatever floats your boat'" would a question about the origin of the phrase suddenly be off-limits?

   • Or does it depend on whether it actually is an attributable quotation? If the latter, how do we know whether the question is on-topic until after it has been asked and answered? Should a question about the sports insult "looks like Tarzan, plays like Jane" be closed because it appears to have originated in a political speech?

   • This is especially problematic because many aphorisms that might once have just been "well-known sayings" are now spuriously attributed to whoever sounds plausible; one example that generated an upvoted question and answers is "boredom punctuated by moments of terror". There are also examples of traditional phrases being modified by celebrities, and thus becoming attached to that celebrity, as in "if ifs and buts were candy and nuts" or the chopping wood example listed in the question here.

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¹ Note that "is on-topic at another Stack Exchange" is explicitly NOT a reason to close a question that is otherwise on-topic in the SE where it is asked. From the MetaSE FAQ:

• Don't migrate for the sake of migration. We only migrate questions because they are off-topic on the original site. It is perfectly possible for a question to be on-topic on multiple sites, but that is not a reason to migrate it elsewhere, unless the OP requests migration. As a general rule, if someone asks a question here, and it's on-topic here, it should stay here.