Believe it!

A few days ago I had spent a lot of time on Google finding quotes which I wanted to put on my website, with, of course, a picture which I'd added to. I found one from Jesse Jackson, a pastor from the USA, who was born in 1941. This quote said "If my mind can conceive it, if my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it because I'm somebody!" This was confirmed by Wikiquote as Jesse Jackson. It was included in a speech at Andersen College in Indiana on 4 March 1979.

Trouble was, this quote was assigned by many other quote sites to someone else - Muhammad Ali! Brainy Quotes, where I often find good quotes, had assigned these words to Jackson. Goodreads also had - but then also assigned the same words to Ali. I looked in Wikiquote and couldn't find these words attributed to Ali. 

Try this. Go onto the page of Google and type this in the search: "did Jesse Jackson say If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it" and press the search button. The first page only lists 5 quote sites (including Goodreads). Then in the Google search, type "did Muhammad Ali say If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, I know I can achieve it". For Ali, in Wikiquote, this quote passage is mentioned in the "Misattributed" box, with the name of Jesse Jackson under it. Google listed, on the first page, 8 quote sites (including Goodreads) which attributed this passage to Ali!

This very much surprises me. I have no idea how many different quote sites ever check on who did say whatever they want to print. (Of course, from my previous blogs there are far too many quotes on far too many sites which are ever printed with no name!)

Don't roll your eyes at me. Just take this for real! The internet is f-a-r too big to believe it can be used for good stuff. I, personally, believe it has to change. For instance, in the past few years...

...Facebook has had so many complaints about Facebook pages which abuse children, abuse women, troll everywhere, print unreal "offers", print extremely bad videos - anything which Facebook seem too often to just ignore. I wonder, does FB's profit mean more to them than these kind of pages? 

...so many websites which publish pornography have been simply opened - and never closed down unless some government finds them. Will that sort of stopping them stop others? I really doubt it.

...advertising on any page you choose to be on - say, Facebook or similar - takes over your screen and you don't seem to be able to stop "suggestions" appearing before you move onto where you want to be. This has also happened on so many You Tube videos - with no "avoid" button on ads. Yesterday I wanted to look at a music video and got a 15 second car ad before that. That's something I couldn't click off but I wouldn't watch it, so I didn't watch the music video either.

...the "news" is very brief and doesn't give anyone a reality of whatever happened in the world that day. Too many people just don't even bother to watch "news" - unless it's of their own taste.

So many more issues. So little time to fix them. So much happens across the whole world, and most of my own time these days I just don't want to see anything. I guess I've pretty much made up my mind to live my own life, doing whatever I quietly enjoy - like quotes. I'll just forget the TV and newspapers and just roll on slowly.

Except I will still get really pissed off if quotes don't mention who said them!!!