QUOTE_AUTHENTICITY — fake/floating quote policy (James Allen)

James Allen seeded the modern self-help / New-Thought genre, so his name and
this book attract a fog of motivational mis-quotes. Many of the most famous
"As a Man Thinketh" lines circulate in mutated forms that are NOT in the
actual 1903 text. This page is the предохранитель.

Statuses

  • verified_primary — verbatim (after whitespace normalization, case-exact) in
    the ingested corpus (sources/asamanthinketh_pg4507.txt).
  • reported_by_allen — a quotation Allen himself puts in his text (the
    scriptural aphorism, the proem, the bracketed verse, the "So You will be…"
    poem, the Serenity passage, the Stanton Kirkham Davis passage). Verbatim in
    the corpus, but the words are the reported source's; Allen endorses them by
    citing them.
  • paraphrase_of_primary — a genuine idea from the book, but circulating in a
    reworded form that is NOT a verbatim substring. Reject as a quote; the idea
    is real, the wording is not.
  • popular_but_unverified — circulates as "James Allen said…", no trace in this
    corpus and no edition trace found.
  • misattributed — verifiably not Allen (often Buddha, Emerson, or anonymous).

Verification rule

A quote candidate is matched (whitespace-normalized, case-exact substring, with
a one-mark quote-wrapper strip fallback) against the English corpus — As a Man
Thinketh is our single ingested layer. RU renderings are «перевод наш» and are
not matched (they are translations, not evidence). RAG-time rule: a
popular-quote-shaped query with no corpus match answers
NO_RELEVANT_KB_EVIDENCE, never confirms.

Starter list (extend as encountered)

Quote (common form) Status Note
«As a man thinketh in his heart so is he» reported_by_allen (Proverbs 23:7) The title/epigraph. In the corpus as: “The aphorism, 'As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,'…”. Allen quotes Scripture; it is not his coinage. Genuine to the corpus as a reported aphorism.
«A man is literally what he thinks» verified_primary ch. Thought and Character. Full line: “A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the complete sum of all his thoughts.”
«Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are» verified_primary ch. Effect of Thought on Circumstances. Exact.
«Circumstance does not make the man; it reveals him to himself» verified_primary ch. Effect of Thought on Circumstances. Exact (no period after "himself" in the source — a run-on into the next sentence).
«The dreamers are the saviours of the world» verified_primary ch. Visions and Ideals. Exact.
«Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become» verified_primary ch. Visions and Ideals. Exact.
«You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you» misattributed / popular_but_unverified The single most-shared "As a Man Thinketh" quote online — and it is NOT in the book. No verbatim match. From Allen's other writing or a paraphraser; reject as a quote from this corpus.
«You are the master of your fate, the captain of your soul» misattributed (W. E. Henley, Invictus) Frequently pinned to Allen because of his master-of-thought theme. Henley's line, not Allen's; not in the corpus.
«A man is but the product of his thoughts; what he thinks, he becomes» misattributed (Gandhi-adjacent) / paraphrase_of_primary Circulates under both Gandhi and Allen. Not verbatim here. The real Allen line is “A man is literally what he thinks”. Reject the reworded form.
«Mind is the master power that moulds and makes» reported_by_allen (proem) The opening verse epigraph. Verbatim in the corpus but presented as a set-apart poem, not expository Allen prose.
«The body is the servant of the mind» verified_primary ch. Effect of Thought on Health and the Body. Exact.
«Self-control is strength; Right Thought is mastery; Calmness is power» verified_primary ch. Serenity (book's closing lines). Exact.
«Serenity is the last lesson of culture» (short form) reported_by_allen + paraphrase_of_primary The corpus has it inside a reported quotation and longer: “That exquisite poise of character, which we call serenity is the last lesson of culture, the fruitage of the soul.” The clipped popular form is a paraphrase of a reported line.
«Good thoughts bear good fruit, bad thoughts bad fruit» verified_primary ch. Effect of Thought on Circumstances. Exact.
«You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration» verified_primary ch. Visions and Ideals. Exact.
Generic «James Allen motivation / law of attraction» posters popular_but_unverified Reject by default; Allen explicitly denies wish-granting (“Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are.”).

Pipeline hooks

  1. scripts/verify_quotes.py verbatim gate — invented evidence is structurally
    impossible in the KB (every blockquote must be a real substring).
  2. reported_by_allen discipline — where a note quotes Scripture, the proem, or
    the Serenity/Davis passages, the reported source is named in the surrounding
    prose; the quote is not presented as Allen's own coinage.
  3. Mutation check — the most famous circulating "quotes" (see the
    misattributed/paraphrase_of_primary rows) are rejected unless a
    verbatim substring is found. The book is short; if it is not in
    asamanthinketh_pg4507.txt, it is not from As a Man Thinketh.

KB build verification (2026-07-08, As a Man Thinketh hand-built KB)

  • Every evidence blockquote in concepts/, principles/, chains/ verified as
    a case-exact, whitespace-normalized substring of asamanthinketh_pg4507.txt
    (scripts/verify_quotes.py, 0 failures).
  • Reported quotations (Proverbs aphorism, proem, Serenity/Davis passages) are
    marked as reported speech at their usage sites.