About
Most quote merchandise is lying to you.
Not on purpose, usually. But walk through any marketplace and you’ll find the same handful of “inspirational” lines stamped on shirts and mugs — confidently credited to Einstein, Gandhi, Marilyn Monroe, the Buddha — and a startling share of them are misattributed, paraphrased into something the author never wrote, or simply invented. Nobody checks. The inspiration industry runs on vibes.
I’m Vickie MacFadden, and getting words right is the one thing I’ve never been able to let slide. My husband and business partner, Jay, runs the tech side; I handle the words.
I’ve been an editor most of my life — the high school paper, the newsletters for our own B2B business. Correctness is just in my blood. I’m the person who double-checks the spelling of a name before anything goes to print. Every time.
Partly that’s the editor in me. Partly it’s personal. My own name doesn’t stand much of a chance: “Vickie” is spelled very uniquely (thanks Mom) with that ‘e’ at the end, and “MacFadden” has two a’s that almost nobody lands on the first try. I’ve spent a lifetime watching my name rendered carelessly — close enough, but not right. You learn what almost right feels like. It is not the same as right.
So when I see a line of someone’s actual work handed to the wrong author — or rewritten into something they never said — I feel it. A misquote does to a writer what a careless typo does to a name: it puts the wrong thing where the right thing belongs.
And yes, I love an em dash. You’ll find them all through the site — unapologetically.
One rule.
If we can’t verify it, we don’t print it.
Before a quote goes on a single product, we trace it to its primary source — the actual book, the edition, the translator and the year. When the scholarship is genuinely divided, we tell you on the listing instead of pretending it’s settled. And when the real author turns out to be someone other than the famous name on the meme, we credit the real author.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world” isn’t Gandhi’s line — it traces to Arleen Lorrance in 1974. “Do not go where the path may lead…” isn’t Emerson — it’s Muriel Strode, 1903. We know, because we checked. We always check.
This isn’t a marketing angle bolted onto a shop. It’s the reason the shop exists. I’m credited in Quote Investigator’s entry on the “Be the change” misquote — because getting attribution right is something I actually do, not just something I say.
The right words. The right name. Spelled correctly. That’s the whole brand. That extends to the objects too — read why the shirt itself matters.
Words with provenance.