“With great power comes great responsibility“ is for many of us known as the phrase Uncle Ben uses in a conversation with Peter Parker in Spider Man. Originally it wasn’t a spoken phrase but a narrative caption in the last panel of the comic, but then again, also that wasn’t the original source of the quote. It seems Theodore Roosevelt used it (“Responsibility should go with power” ~1908) and way before that, also William Lamb, a member of the British Parliament (“The possession of great power necessarily implies great responsibility” ~1817). If you also count “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required” as being the inspiration for the Roosevelt and Lamb quotes, then the first use of the phrase can even be contributed to Jesus of Nazareth (Gospel of Luke, 12:48).
So where I’m going with this? No, it’s not about getting credits for something that was originally your idea (or an idea perceived by you as originally yours), although you might think that. I intended to write a blog about “With great testing comes the responsibility of valuable reporting” and I got side-tracked by the quote itself and its origin (what was it about the squirrel again?). For some reason I had a ‘Ben’ in mind with this quote, but it was the Ben-Kenobi kind J. Which is a bit odd, since I know the StarWars movies by heart as a fan (of IV, V and VI mind!). I set out to verify this (when writing something make at least a bit of an effort to check the sources, right?) and I got surprised by the actual history of the quote and thought it might be fun to share this.
There is however a more serious lesson to be abstracted from the fun fact that IS indeed also related to the responsibility of valuable reporting. Because valuable reporting is also about getting the facts right, verify the information that you are writing down and not making things more beautiful (or better or worse) than it is in reality. That can also mean that you have to get to the bottom of things and that you have to make an effort sometimes to get to the (absolute) source OR at least note that is was the most certain information that your facts, advice or report is based upon. Information isn’t (always) infallible, so our reporting shouldn’t be that either. And with that in mind, I better rephrase my first paragraph to ..”then the probable first use of the phrase can even be contributed to…”.
