Regular readers of my blog and followers on Twitter will know that I love quotations – little nuggets of wisdom to make you smile, make you think, make you feel, make you connect. With the growth of the internet, there has developed a proliferation of websites and blogs that collate quotations, so that you can find a quote for any occasion on just about any subject matter. My personal favourites are The Quote Garden, which organises quotes into diverse subjects and brings some really novel and interesting quotations into the mix, and also Goodreads, which provides quotes from a literary angle.

That quotations are being so widely shared is a wonderful, inspirationaldevelopment. But it exacerbates an age-old problem with accuracy. Plenty of quotes are inaccurate in one (or all) of three ways.

1. An unfaithful representation of the original wording. Take the oft-quoted line from Casablanca: ‘Play it again, Sam.’ If you watch the movie, you find that the line is in fact simply,‘Play it, Sam.’ A subtle difference, but a difference all the same.
2. An invented line never delivered by the author him-/herself. ‘Elementary, my dear Watson.’ Surely a line from Sir Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes works? No, in fact it’s from a book called Psmith, Journalist by P.G. Wodehouse.
3. A faithful representation of original wording, but attributed to the wrong person. For example, these words were made famous in Nelson Mandela’s inaugural address: ‘Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our Light not our Darkness, that most frightens us.’ Many incorrectly assume that these were Mandela’s own words, but they are from Marianne Williamson’s 1992 book A Return to Love.

The problem of misattribution has been hotly discussed in the last week, thanks to this stamp released by America’s postal service:

The stamp commemorates beloved writer and poet Maya Angelou, who died last year. Angelou is most famous for her autobiographical series, especially the first: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The quote on the stamp certainly falls into line with this book title, and with sentiment within the book.

But another author, Joan Walsh Anglund, has come forward to claim the quotation as her own. The line in fact appears in Anglund’s poem book A Cup of Sun, which was published in 1967, two years before Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

The misattribution of this quote is so common, the postal service can surely be forgiven for the mistake. Even Barack Obama cited the quote when he awarded Angelou with the 2013 National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal.

What of Anglund? Well, she has been wonderfully gracious. She said:

‘It’s an interesting connection, and interesting it would happen and already be printed and on her stamp. I love her and all she’s done, and I also love my own private thinking that also comes to the public…’

Attribution is important, though of course at times mistakes will occur, and the public will take for their own a quotation and change it. But I’ve been glad to see the media covering this incident, for the sake of both the writers in question: Anglund, who deserves credit for the beautiful words she created, and Angelou, who wrote so many beautiful and compelling words herself that she deserves to be remembered for those.

What do you think of the stamp? Were you, as I was, saddened to see a trend on Twitter for posting the stamp with another non-Angelou quote, which is surely disrespectful to her memory? Do you have examples of other misattributions that amuse, concern or frustrate you? I would love to hear your thoughts.