People usually enjoy having words to live by. Timeless statements that they hold dear to their hearts. Well what happens when a quote is misstated or even made up, while being attributed to a respected source? It leaves individuals who don’t verify the information sadly misled.

This misuse of quotes often occurs in regards to the Bible. Fire & Hammer has details of that. And there are plenty more such as “money is the root of all evil”. While the actual Bible verse written by Paul to Timothy says:

The King James Version says:

No matter what translation is used, the verse attributes the root of all evil to the love of money, not to the actual money its self. The misquotes of this verse leave many feeling that to even possess money is to engage in sinful activity. God help the misled souls.

Even less authoritative sources are misquoted, which leaves some people with a skewed impression of the misquoted individual’s views. Lately the words of American founding father Benjamin Franklin have been misquoted. Leaving many Americans thinking that he is on board with the Liberal agenda, of bashing President Bush’s efforts to make America more secure. Liberals are running around saying that Benjamin Franklin said ”Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” I’ve been hearing them run this line since days after 9/11/2001. But the actual quote is:

Leaving out the words “essential” and “a little temporary” change the entire context of the statement. It goes from being a statement of protecting the most vital of liberties for short term safety, to protecting every action under the sun that one can attribute to liberty while having no regard for security at all. Michelle Malkin has details of the latest abuse of Benjamin Franklin’s words. College kids are mishandling the quote, which is a sad example of education in America. And even NY Times nut Maureen Dowd has gotten in on the act, as Michelle details in her post. (But we already knew the NY Times had a problem with fact checking.)

The Conservative Cat offers some great analysis of the abuse of Ben Franklin’s words and even has a nice Flash application, that shows the balance of privacy versus security. Speaking of security, keep an eye on that cat folks, he’s out to take over the world !