So I’d been reading Colin a book from my childhood — Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World — and on the inside front cover was a bookplate. I didn’t recognize the handwriting of the person who’d written my name on this plate, but I liked the sketch of Don Quixote and the quote:

“The man who fights for his ideals is the man who is alive.”

Being a historiandork, I wanted to make sure that this was indeed the source of the quote so that I could, well, dorkily put it in my email footer. My researchgoogle search revealed two things:

one, lots of people like this quote enough to put it in their email footer, particularly people who write into various tech listservs.

two, this quote is ascribed to Miguel Cervantes but without documentation.

So I loaded up google books and searched a copy of Don Quixote. No luck for the exact quote. Google books through up a bunch of other folks who’d cited this quotation none of whom had offered documentation. Hmmm…to be continued.