So that “I will not rejoice” quote that everyone reposted yesterday wasn’t from Martin Luther King, it turns out. Instead, it looks like it originated with a young woman in Pennsylvania who had no intention of hoaxing anyone. She just posted her own thoughts on Bin Laden’s death to Facebook, and the rest is internet history.
If your Twitter feed and Facebook page look anything like mine, yesterday various versions of the quote were all over both:
“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.” –Martin Luther King, Jr.
The problem is, though, that King never said that. Or rather, he said the last three sentences, but not the first.
The bulk of the quote comes from a 1957 Christmas sermon of King’s, in the following context: “Let us move now from the practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate…” But the beginning part, the “I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy” part — the part that seems to apply most directly to the death of Bin Laden — appears nowhere in King’s writings, nor does it appear anywhere online before yesterday.
So where did it come from? The Atlantic’s Megan McArdle, who was the first to pick up on the quote’s falsity, tried and failed to track it down. About an hour ago, Drew Grant at Salon claimed that magician/objectivist/prankster Penn Jillette was the first one to post it to Twitter, saying he suspected that “Penn just made it up in order to see how many people would blindly follow along and quote it as fact, without ever checking up on the sources.” (Penn quoted only the first sentence — the part that’s not King’s at all.)
Penn denies making anything up, though, and has in fact gone into full self-flagellation mode on Twitter. And by the time Grant posted, someone else had come forward with what looks to me like a more plausible explanation:
Late last night Jessica Dovey, a recent college grad from Pennsylvania, sent Penn a tweet saying that the quote was hers, posting a screenshot from her Facebook page explaining how the confusion started. Here’s what went down, she says.
Early yesterday afternoon she posted a status update to Facebook that read like this:
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.” MLK jr
Note the location of the first quote mark. Dovey wrote the first sentence as an expression of her own views, appending the King quote as a further explanation.
I haven’t seen any evidence to back this claim up, and it’s possible it’s a hoax of its own — I just tweeted Dovey to ask her for more info — but my first reaction is that this seems completely plausible. The original quote, as McArdle pointed out, never quite rang true. In addition to the weird specificity, there’s an abruptness to the transition that clangs a little against the mind. But when you move the quote mark, that abruptness disappears, and the whole thing flows.
More generally, it’s my experience that a lot of these false facts start out just this way — not with a conscious attempt to propagate a lie, but with something that gets misquoted, misunderstood, or misrepresented entirely by accident. We’ve seen this happen with stories as different as the beer pong herpes scare of 2009 and the claim that only 4.7% of American blacks voted in the 2010 elections.
It’s hard to get a hoax right when you’re doing it on purpose, but it’s weirdly easy to get one going by accident.
22 comments
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May 3, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Abby
False or not, its still a great quote and it definitely describes how I feel about the happenings.
May 3, 2011 at 2:45 pm
Ian Rogers
I don’t have a problem with anyone who denounces violence, and by combining the first sentence with the original MLK quote the author certainly tried to convey that, however her use of the word “enemy” by definition invokes hate and harm towards another, and that is a hypocrisy. I think she is confused.
May 3, 2011 at 2:47 pm
Carrie
This is seriously the first coherent article I have read about this quote confusion. Thanks for researching it. :)
May 3, 2011 at 3:03 pm
Clarification on Dr. King Quote « Write to Life
[…] https://studentactivism.net/2011/05/03/mlk-obl-quote/ […]
May 3, 2011 at 5:06 pm
Angus Johnston
Yeah, Abby. It’s not exactly how I feel, but it’s a well-expressed idea. One thing I’ve seen people doing today (and did once myself) is reposting the quote listing her as the author.
Ian, I don’t think it’s hypocrisy for someone who supports non-violence to use the word “enemy.” It’s all about how the word is used.
Carrie: Thanks!
May 3, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Ryan
Word.
May 3, 2011 at 5:43 pm
Femke
Bedankt! for this article. We are living in an interesting time, in which people from all over the world can inspire one another through this medium of internet. I have just shared your blog with my friends, as it gives solid background information on the quote that has touched many hearts yesterday and today.
May 3, 2011 at 5:53 pm
In light of the killing of Osama bin Laden…
[…] Apparently this is a misquote. Only the last three sentences were spoken by King. “I mourn the loss of thousands of […]
May 3, 2011 at 8:34 pm
Damien
LMFAO I thought this was fabricated bullshit when I saw it posted on Facebook and attributed to him by one of my preachy but well meaning left wing pinko friends.
May 3, 2011 at 8:54 pm
Damien
You bleeding hearts sicken me, back in WWII im positive you would’ve all been appleasers as Hitler rolled through Europe.
I’m happy Osama got shot in the face, I’m rejoicing actually. It’s good for humanity, and it brings closure to his victims families.
It’s just a shame that others that had it coming weren’t killed before causing more carnage. Stalin… Idi Amin….. Pol Pot…… Ian Paisley…… Hitler…. Joesph Kony, or just any serial killer, rapist, child molester, or people that bash the elderly.
Pffft! Or would you sooner hold to a faux poetic, tacky sentiment about a night devoid of stars?
So easy to be noble when it’s not any of your family that’s been killed
May 3, 2011 at 10:37 pm
James Aaron
Damien, there’s a huge difference between passively allowing someone to take over most of Europe and refusing to rejoice in someone’s death. Death, especially violent death is not a joyous thing, even when the person dying is evil. I would feel as good if they captured Osama as I do that they killed him – it is good he is not able to cause further harm, but it’s not better that he is dead than if he were in prison.
May 4, 2011 at 1:26 am
mollie
“It’s hard to get a hoax right when you’re doing it on purpose, but it’s weirdly easy to get one going by accident. ”
Can we quote you on that Mr. Johnston? ;)
Thank you for the clarifications!
May 4, 2011 at 2:43 am
Webmaster Yahoo
Yeah i heard about this, personaly i thought the quote wasnt evil i thought it was well said.
May 4, 2011 at 7:57 am
J Walz
Actually the second part of this quote is real (returing violence for violence on)… although it was mis-quoted. Here’s the full quote:
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, 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.”
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR., Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
May 4, 2011 at 10:41 am
sisi
Well, one thing this quote/misquote/quote-combination has accomplished is that it has shown me that I am not alone in my personal reaction to Bin Laden’s killing. Nobody is arguing that he was a demented, misguided, and possibly evil person but seeing people run into the streets rejoicing in someone’s murder I find appalling. And… how exactly is this different from the extremists running onto the streets 10 years ago rejoicing in the killings that happened here? Rejoicing the murder of many = rejoicing murder of one. No difference.
Personally, the only one who should decide about life and death is God (or whatever creator you believe in). To take the liberty to rule over this decision makes you no different than the criminal. So a killing is o.k. (and even a joyous event) if it’s righteous? I don’t agree. Not our decision.
We should be locking people up who kill others not kill them in return. What kind of strange message is that?
sorry…didn’t mean to rant. actually I just wanted to say, I am happy to be reminded that America is full of reasonable, critically thinking people. Sometimes the sensationalist and one-sided media coverage makes me forget that.
Thank you for making this a neutral (sticking to the facts) article, even though you may have your own sentiments. That’s what journalism should be about. Neutral reporting. We form our own opinions.
May 4, 2011 at 8:07 pm
Top Posts — WordPress.com
[…] The True Story Behind that Martin Luther King Quote On Bin Laden’s Death So that “I will not rejoice” quote that everyone reposted yesterday wasn’t from Martin Luther King, it turns out. […] […]
May 4, 2011 at 10:59 pm
Maria Alyssa
I can’t believe just one simple misquoting of one blog leads to this… Here’s the story, the origin of Martin Luther King’s fake quote about Bin Laden’s death:
http://maria-alyssa.tumblr.com/post/5188517009/the-real-story-behind-martin-luther-king-quote-on-bin
May 5, 2011 at 2:56 am
Julie
A high probability exists that the US government sought capturing Osama bin Laden alive. Could it be possible that his reaction to being found out helped prompt his demise? From the information coming out gradually he didn’t exactly waltz out with his hands in the air surrendering. Of course violence begets more violence. However, to do nothing to stop a madman from at the very least teaching children to blow themselves up for his master scheme is unethical. Damien says it best, better to rejoice his chosen death than to allow him to terrorize innocents across the globe.
May 17, 2011 at 5:47 am
S
http://maria-alyssa.tumblr.com/post/5188517009/the-real-story-behind-martin-luther-king-quote-on-bin
May 17, 2011 at 5:47 am
S
http://maria-alyssa.tumblr.com/post/5188517009/the-real-story-behind-martin-luther-king-quote-on-bin
^THIS.
August 27, 2011 at 3:40 pm
blogmafia
Hi I’m Martin I follow your website in a while a really good job thanks.
October 1, 2011 at 11:39 pm
Re-Be :: Nick Potter – Befriending our genius
[…] been attributed to Einstein to give them greater power? This might be another story like the fake Martin Luther King quote that rapidly spread though social networks after Bin Laden’s […]