His quote ... kind of
This quote went viral on the internet, following the killing of Osama Bin Laden:
”I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even 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.”
Penn Jillette: Not him
The citation was attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr., but a number of people came forward to debunk it. A Salon article attributed the quote to famous magician Penn Jillette. Megan McArdle of The Atlantic wrote, “Out of Osama’s Death, a Fake Quotation is Born.” But when I (silly me) posted the quotation on my Facebook page and heard about kerfuffle, I found someone who indeed attributed the quote to MLK’s 1963 Strength to Love.
Who better to ask than Clay Carson and the folks at Stanford’s Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute, home of the King Papers Project? The crackerjack editorial team responded within minutes.
Here’s the real quote, from “Loving Your Enemies,” in Strength to Love:
The mysterious Ms. Dovey
“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. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.”
“Mangled to a meme in less than two days,” concludes McArdle in a follow up piece. Ground Zero for the brouhaha is Jessica Dovey, a 24-year old Penn State graduate who now teaches English to kids in Kobe, Japan. Her Facebook page had the King citation, introduced with her own musings. The quotation marks got lost in a tweet.
But thanks, Jessica, we like the thought.
Big on quotes himself
Postscript: Just got an email of clarification from Tenisha Armstrong of the King Institute:
Just to follow up: I have not been able to substantiate the first part of the quote, but that doesn’t mean King did not say it. I did find a King quote that expresses a similar sentiment:
“This story symbolizes something basic about the universe. It’s meaning is not found in the drowning of a few men, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being.” King, draft of Chapter VIII in Strength to Love, “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” in Papers 6:507.
The published version of the quote was a little different: “The meaning of this story is not found in the drowning of Egyptian soldiers, for no one should rejoice at the death or defeat of a human being.” King, “The Death of Evil upon the Seashore,” in Strength to Love.
There!
Postscript on 3/5: The previously unknown Jessica Dovey, with a photo taken from her Facebook page, gets a Q&A in The Atlantic here. Of all things.
Postscript on 3/5: Stan Szczesny commented on John Donne‘s famous “No Man Is an Island” passage from his sermons in the comments section below. Tenisha Armstrong of the MLK Institute’s editorial team replied with the following:
Quotable John
Thanks, Stan. Your rememberance of this apt quote by John Donne reminds me of how frequently King quoted from Donne’s work. The Donne quote you posted is from “Meditations XVII” (1624). In King’s 1960 sermon, “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” a version of which King had preached as early as 1954, he discusses how everybody is “tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, where what affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Of Donne, King says:
“Strangely enough I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made; I didn’t make it that way, but it’s like that. And John Donne recorded it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ And then he goes on toward the end to say: ‘Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ Only by discovering this are we able to master the breadth of life.”
Quote from Volume 5 of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., “Threshold of a New Decade,” January 1959-December 1960, p. 577.
Tags: Clay Carson, Jessica Dovey, Jr., Martin Luther King, Megan McArdle, Osama Bin Laden, Penn Jillette, Tenisha Armstrong
May 4th, 2011 at 7:33 am
The Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t quite work, how about this one from John Donne:
No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
I wrote a post on it at:
http://stansgreatbooksblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/osama-bin-ladenthe-martin-luther-king.html
May 4th, 2011 at 8:24 am
Thanks, Stan. But where did the lineation come from? I remember once searching in vain for this “poem,” only to find out that it is, in fact, from his sermons, which are too little read (and they are, of course, in prose). They’re great! I highly recommend them.
May 5th, 2011 at 9:20 am
[…] Martin Luther King quote goes viral: Fake? Not really… […]
May 5th, 2011 at 10:43 am
Thanks, Stan. Your rememberance of this apt quote by John Donne reminds me of how frequently King quoted from Donne’s work. The Donne quote you posted is from “Meditations XVII” (1624). In King’s 1960 sermon “The Three Dimensions of a Complete Life,” a version of which King had preached as early as 1954, he discusses how everybody is “tied in a single garment of destiny, caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, where what affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Of Donne, King says:
“Strangely enough I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made; I didn’t make it that way, but it’s like that. And John Donne recorded it years ago and placed it in graphic terms: ‘No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.’ And then he goes on toward the end to say: ‘Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in mankind. Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ Only by discovering this are we able to master the breadth of life.”
Quote from Volume 5 of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Threshold of a New Decade, January 1959-December 1960, p. 577.
May 6th, 2011 at 3:35 am
[…] Use of the quote peaked on May 3rd before realisation spread (following a news story from The Atlantic) that it was in fact fake and could not be traced back to MLK. Shortly after however, a blog post from Stanford University argued to the contrary. […]
May 6th, 2011 at 6:53 pm
Another misquote that took off that day, and the clarification:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/atlantic/20110503/ts_atlantic/marktwaindidntsaythingaboutobituaries37279_1
May 9th, 2011 at 12:17 am
[…] Use of the quote peaked on May 3rd before realisation spread (following a news story from The Atlantic) that it was in fact fake and could not be traced back to MLK. Shortly after however, a blog post from Stanford University argued to the contrary. […]
August 22nd, 2011 at 7:40 am
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January 5th, 2012 at 8:56 am
My social studies teacher says this spech was kind of eerie because it was like he knew something was going to happen to him (“i might not get there with you”) to bad he died. he was a brave man, and we’ve gotten to the promise land Martin. we have
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[…] rubbernecking that many Americans collectively engaged in when Bin Laden got shot. What would Martin Luther King Jr. […]
June 13th, 2014 at 12:35 am
A think M.L. King is a great man. I really liked read about him and i don’t think this idea is fake.
December 13th, 2015 at 4:16 am
My social studies teacher says this spech was kind of eerie because it was like he knew something was going to happen to him (“i might not get there with you”) to bad he died. he was a brave man, and we’ve gotten to the promise land Martin. we have