How to find great quotations without visiting any Google Search results

Steve Jobs quotes 001

The Internet is the perfect place to research some of theĀ greatest quotes from the world’s most insightful people, but often searching for a quote feels like finding a needle in the haystack. What if you could find great quotations without having to click through a bunch of links in search results like an animal? Well, now you can as Google has quietly rolled out handy Quotes cards that inject your search results withā€”you guessed rightā€”quotes.

In this post, I’m going to teach you how toĀ retrieveĀ quotations on your Mac, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad without visiting any Google Search results.

Before we get to it, Google extracts these quotes from online sources, various web pages, blog posts and so forth and conveniently presents them in their distilled form through the new Quotes cards.

Caveat: For the time being, these cardsā€”like many other content cards available in the Google Search interfaceā€”are available in the United States and a few select markets so your country may be excluded.

If so, use the United States edition of Google by logging with your Google Account into google.com to change and save your language settingsĀ in Google Search Preferences.

ThisĀ nifty little time-saving tool should be great for both research and fun.

How to find quotations on desktop without visiting search results

Step 1: Open Safari, Google Chrome or another desktop browser of your choice on your Mac.

Step 2: Type into the browser’s URL field your searchĀ query in the form ā€œPERSON quoteā€ and replace ā€œPERSONā€ with a desired individual whose quotes you want to pull. For example, to retrieve Steve Jobs quotes you’d use the search query ā€œSteve Jobs quotes.ā€

Step 3: Hit Enter.

InĀ yourĀ search results page,Ā Google will highlightĀ best quotes by the individualĀ insideĀ the Quotes card embedded at the top, like so.

Google Search Quotes card on desktop

Tip: Click on the down arrow to expand the Quotes card andĀ see a longer list ofĀ quotes.

How to find quotations on mobile without visiting search results

Step 1: Fire up Safari, Google Chrome or any other third-party browser available in the App Store on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad.

Step 2: Type into the browser’s URL field your searchĀ query in the form ā€œPERSON quoteā€ and replace ā€œPERSONā€ with a desired individual whose quotes you want to pull.

Step 3: Hit Enter.

InĀ yourĀ search results page, Google will highlightĀ best quotes by the individualĀ insideĀ the Quotes card embedded at the top, like so.

Google Search Quotes card on mobile

Tip: These Quotes cardsĀ are also accessibleĀ in Google’s native mobile application for the iPhone and iPad, which can be downloaded at no charge in the App Store.

Google Search Quotes card in native iOS app

As seen above, you just use the sameĀ query format as described above and the app injects quotations into the Quote card that you can swipe left and right.

Tip: For even faster results, use voice search in the mobile Google app by tapping the microphone icon.

Example searches

As mentioned above, you can easily use this method to search for some of the world’s best known inventors, poets, musicians, inventors, actors and so forth.

I’m particularly liking this one:

ā€œComputers are incredibly fast, accurate and stupid. Human beings are incredibly slow, inaccurate and brilliant. Together they are powerful beyond imagination.ā€ ā€” Albert Einstein

Here are a dozenĀ searches to get you up to speed:

Not all quotes available online are presented through Google’s Quotes cards and the company does not detail the criteria used to build up its database of quotes.

That the Quotes cards don’tĀ link to sources isn’t helping either.

Unfortunately, Apple’s Siri in iOS 8 produces a bunch of weblinks when asked for quotes from random individuals.

Stumbled upon another productivity tip or came upĀ with an idea for one? Send us your submissions at tips@iDownloadBlog.com and we’ll do our best to feature your best and brightest ideas in future articles.