Must be true... I read it on twitter!
I foolishly reposted something I saw (repeated) on twitter as a Facebook status update. When will I learn?
The copy/pasta was as follows:
I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
My excuse(s) is that it really was repeated all over the twittersphere - by minds immeasurably superior to mine - and it was late.
After doing a little research (google) I have gathered the following "facts":
The quote comes from a larger Facebook post by a J. Dovey that went like this:
I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even as an enemy.
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." -MLK Jr.
The quote (that is - the bit in quotes!) has been confirmed as a Martin Luther King quote (Strength to Love, Pg 37)... but it appears that twitters limit of 140 characters and the general punctuation blindness of "teh intarwebs" meant the original posters feelings was first attached to the MJK quote, and then shortened.
Thing is: it doesn't matter (to me) who said it... the sentiment resonated with me which is why I felt the need to repost it. It appears to have done so with a number of people which is why there are over 40,000 hits if you google the phrase (yeah - some of those are posts correcting the MLK attribution but that's still a lot of hits for something that was first written yesterday.) I think the actual MLK quote is also relevant (and so very true), and perhaps that too needs to be reposted a little.
So the moral of this story... I'll leave that to another quote:
"Just because it's repeated on the internet - doesn't make it the truth" - W.Shakespeare.
ETA:
A more coherent version of the story can be found here
The copy/pasta was as follows:
I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
My excuse(s) is that it really was repeated all over the twittersphere - by minds immeasurably superior to mine - and it was late.
After doing a little research (google) I have gathered the following "facts":
The quote comes from a larger Facebook post by a J. Dovey that went like this:
I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even as an enemy.
"Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." -MLK Jr.
The quote (that is - the bit in quotes!) has been confirmed as a Martin Luther King quote (Strength to Love, Pg 37)... but it appears that twitters limit of 140 characters and the general punctuation blindness of "teh intarwebs" meant the original posters feelings was first attached to the MJK quote, and then shortened.
Thing is: it doesn't matter (to me) who said it... the sentiment resonated with me which is why I felt the need to repost it. It appears to have done so with a number of people which is why there are over 40,000 hits if you google the phrase (yeah - some of those are posts correcting the MLK attribution but that's still a lot of hits for something that was first written yesterday.) I think the actual MLK quote is also relevant (and so very true), and perhaps that too needs to be reposted a little.
So the moral of this story... I'll leave that to another quote:
"Just because it's repeated on the internet - doesn't make it the truth" - W.Shakespeare.
ETA:
A more coherent version of the story can be found here