Green Affected Al Gore still quoting non-existent African proverb to mobilize action for non-existent problem
| 04 November 2009
Earlier today, in an effort to promote his new book, Our Choice, Al Gore said:
An old African proverb says, “If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.”
We have to go far. . . quickly.
This blog has been down this road before:
Mark Steyn notes that this is not the first time Al Gore has used this phrase and is also skeptical of it’s origin:
Does this latest African proverb come from any part of Africa in particular, or just from Africa in general? A Google search uncovers no prior use except by the Congregational Church , which, naturally enough, uses it to justify an “open and affirming” approach to such traditional African customs as gay pastors. But I’d be interested to know from any of NR’s African readers from which part of the continent this particular aphorism comes.
A search at Afriprov.org found no such proverb. And I didn’t expect to find one given Al Gore’s history with these types of quotes which we documented on Al Gore’s opportunistic false contention that the Chinese characters for the word “crisis” = danger + opportunity.
Here’s a couple of real African proverbs that Al Gore would be well advised to heed himself:
One falsehood spoils a thousand truths. Ashanti of Ghana
A man who has one finger pointing at another has three pointing towards himself (Nigeria)
Since I posted that last February, I’ve since checked a couple of other African proverb books at my local library. So far I’ve yet to find a source that that will verify an African origin of that phrase. It seems to be just warmed-over feel-good pop psychology for the motivational speaking circuit if you ask me.
Hat tip: Tom Nelson for pointing out Gore’s most recent use of the non-existent proverb.
Comments
www.watchinghistory.com/2009/11/african-union.html
Al Gore, you are a scumbag
Al Gore, you are the scummiest scum bag on the puhLANette
RSS feed for comments to this post.