You've Been Had!

“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 sentiment started appearing online Monday afternoon. After a wild night of jubilation, Americans started waking up to the realization that perhaps, just perhaps there was something a bit overly excessive in the celebrations of a man’s death — even if that man had killed thousands of people around the world.
The quote started making the circuit on Twitter and Facebook and other social media sites. On Facebook, a friend posted it to her wall and 21 others liked it. Some wrote: “that’s beautiful,” “thank you,” “exactly.” The words seemed to soothe the ragged edges of our collective guilt.
Only, as too many things are now a days, the quote is only half accurate. We sought solace in misattribution. The first sentence of the quote, as Megan McArdle found at the Atlantic, does not seem to have been said by Martin Luther King Jr. (The rest of it — “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.” — is King’s writing.) When people started hearing it wasn’t King, some switched the attribution to Mark Twain. It doesn’t look like Twain said it either.
McArdle wonders why someone would make up a quote, only to take no credit for it. “Perhaps they only wanted to say this thing, and knew that no one would pay attention unless it came from someone else,” she writes.
Or perhaps, like so many things online, it mutated from one quote to another, in this endless game of telephone we play, as we all seek out comfort together.* We witnessed a man’s execution on Sunday. We celebrated it, loudly, with flags waving and songs sung. We feel a little shamefaced about our gut reaction. I don’t think I’ll ever know how to react to death and tragedy and anguish — especially with equal measures of relief and joy mixed in.
So, we go, stumbling along, trying to make the best of it, looking to others for guidance, be it in a made up quote or in the comforting choir online that repeats phrases from one status update to another.

[Source]

In this internet era a hoax like this can spread so fast.  Most people don't take the time to check, they see it then pass it along.  Like all the folks who got caught out there with that Osama death video.  So for all you folks who posted that quote as your FB status...um... yeah.