What MLK said
I had an English professor who used to get
deeply annoyed whenever students would cite some literary passage but not
bother to quote it exactly. I recall him telling us, "Look, if you're going to
quote somebody, get it right." One could not pretend to be a serious student of
literature if one didn't care enough about language to get the quotations
right.
When I'm tempted to quote a line or passage from
memory, or figure I've got the words close enough, that professor's words nudge
me to take the trouble to look the passage up. Often the original is not quite
how I remembered it, and often it differs from what I remembered in significant
ways. There's a difference, after all, between "Money is the root of all evil"
and what the Bible actually says: "The love of money is the root of all evil."
Maya Angelou is among those who have pointed out that Martin Luther King Jr. did not
exactly say, "I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness"--though
those words are now engraved on one side of his statue at the new MLK memorial
in Washington.
