Editorial Standards

This page sets out how we decide what goes on this site. It is deliberately specific, so you can hold us to it.

1. Quotations

Every quotation we print is traced to where it was actually said or written, or marked as unverified — a book with a chapter or letter reference, a dated speech, a named interview with an outlet and a date.

We don’t treat quote websites as evidence. Quote-collection sites often repeat attributions without a source, so nothing on this site is sourced to one.

Where a line cannot be traced, we do one of three things, and the page says which:

• Mark it as unverified — “attributed to X, no primary source found”
• Remove the name and keep the words, if the thought is useful and the attribution is not
• Remove it entirely, if the quotation was carrying the argument

Some findings from applying this: “You have power over your mind, not outside events” is not Marcus Aurelius. “Be the change you wish to see in the world” is not Gandhi’s wording. “Success is not final” is not Churchill’s. Famous lines often travel a long way from the people who first wrote them.

2. Fiction is labelled as fiction

Lines from films, television, novels and video games are marked as such, with the work named.

A film line quoted with only a character’s name attached — or a historical figure’s name — can end up repeated as history, so we name the work:

• “It is a kingdom of conscience, or nothing” is Balian in Kingdom of Heaven (2005), written by William Monahan. It is not a medieval quotation.
• The Théoden speech people quote is Peter Jackson’s film wording, not Tolkien’s.
• The Desmond Doss lines that circulate are screenplay dialogue, not the words of the real man.

Where an article draws a lesson from a story, the article says it is a story.

3. Research claims

No “studies show” without the study. If a claim rests on research, the research is named — the authors, the journal and the year — so you can go and read it.

Association is not cause, and we say which one a finding is. A finding that book readers live longer is not a finding that reading extends life, and the article says which kind of finding it is.

Replication is mentioned where it matters. Several famous findings in the self-improvement genre did not survive larger studies, and where that is the case this site says so — power posing, the marshmallow test, and the strongest claims made for growth mindset among them.

4. Anything time-sensitive carries a date

Prices, laws, product names, company positions, who holds which job, the state of a conflict — all of it goes stale. Articles containing anything of that kind carry the date they were checked, and where an article describes a moment in time it says so at the top rather than quietly reading as though it were still true.

5. What we will not publish

No medical, health, financial, investment or legal advice. Ever. Not a dosage, not a protocol, not a stock, not a strategy presented as one. Where a subject touches health or money, the article describes and attributes rather than recommends, and points at a professional.

Nothing is described as treating, preventing or curing a named condition.

No product is recommended for mental health support.

Where a page touches suicide, self-harm or despair, it carries crisis helpline information — worldwide, not for one country.

6. Money

Nothing on this site is published in exchange for payment, and no one pays us to mention a product or a brand.

7. Sources we do and do not use

Used: primary texts and translations, the letters and papers themselves, peer-reviewed research, official statistics and regulatory documents, reference works of record, and reporting from established outlets — cited by name and date.

Not used as evidence: quote-aggregator sites, content farms, AI-generated summaries of sources we have not read, and any page that cites this site (a citation that loops back to us is not corroboration — we have found one, and removed it).

A note on blocked pages: some publishers return an error to automated requests. That is a bot block, not a dead link, and we confirm such sources by other means rather than dropping them.

8. Images and licensing

Images are either our own, licensed, or taken from collections released for free public use — chiefly museum open-access archives. Where an image is AI-generated it is not presented as a photograph or as a historical artefact.

Image captions and alt text are held to the same standard as the article text. A caption is a claim.

9. How AI tools are used

AI tools help us research, check and write the articles on this site. They search for and read sources, compare claims against them, and draft and edit text.

A person decides what is published. A claim goes on the page because a source supports it, not because a tool produced it, and the sources are shown on the page so you can check them yourself.

10. Telling us something is wrong

If you find an error, tell us: hacksvitae@gmail.com. A source or a citation makes it faster, but is not required.

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Why this page exists

This library was rebuilt in 2026, and every article in it was re-read against its sources as part of that work. Some things did not hold up and were fixed: quotations with no traceable origin, dates that needed correcting, a source that could not be found.

That is easy to get wrong, for anyone who writes about history, quotes or research — us included. It is the reason this page sets out the method rather than making a general claim about care.

The standard we aim for is simple: that you could repeat something you read here and find it holds up. Where we fall short of that, we want to hear about it.

Last reviewed September 2026. Questions: hacksvitae@gmail.com · About Hacks Vitae · Disclaimer · Terms