Labour Party Presidential candidate Peter Obi can’t just stop bombarding his army of Obidients with lies and fallacies. On Thursday, he attributed a` famous quote to the Italian poet, writer and philosopher, Dante Alighieri. According to Obi, Dante once wrote: “The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.”
A Google check showed that the quote was wrongly attributed. Dante never wrote such, even though past users had all wrongly credited him.
President John F. Kennedy attributed the remark to Dante. American civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. also made the ascription to Dante. But according to multiple authorities online, they were all wrong.
Quote Investigator believes that the statement “evolved in a multistep process from a changing and imperfect interpretation of Dante’s work. In 1915 Theodore Roosevelt accurately wrote that Dante had “reserved a special place of infamy” for neutral angels. In 1917 a religious orator named W. M. Vines incorrectly stated that Dante had placed neutral individuals “in the lowest place in hell”.
“In 1944 the spiritual writer Henry Powell Spring penned a book of aphorisms that included a statement ascribed to Dante that closely matched the modern quotation. John F. Kennedy used the saying several times in speeches in the 1950s and later. Kennedy also attributed the remark to Dante”.
I recommend the research of Quote Investigator https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/01/14/hottest/ for our education. Good morning to all the ObiDients and the ObidiEnd!.
Bayo Onanuga
