Time for me to take another pet peeve out for a walk: the Internet’s terrible record of misattributed and/or mangled quotes.
Mind you, things weren’t perfect back in Bartlett’s day. Buddha did not say “Hate is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies,” dozens of memes to the contrary.
Voltaire did not say “I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It,” despite the insistence of 1.8 million results in a Google Search. I have fallen in love with the Quote Investigator website, which deals with the Voltaire quote, among many others.
It's been years now since I decided to apply the old journalism rule, “If your mother says she loves you, check it out” to every Internet quote whose attribution seems the least bit dubious. I am as scrupulous as I can be; for me there is no such thing as a quote too good to check out. I am proud of the integrity on my Journalism Quotes page; I will stand by every attribution, especially the ones I heard personally.
Recently I was pointed at the quote “Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” [So good I made it an item in This and That].
Despite 234 websites to the contrary it was almost certainly not Camus who said it or wrote it. The Internet’s best guess is that it was a Jewish Camp song, with the added line at the end, “And together, we will walk in the ways of Hashem.” Probably trimmed off because it would cast doubt on Camus as the source (raised a Catholic, he died an atheist/existentialist).
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