Quotes Mangled In Translation

When I was a child I listened as a child.
Selectively, I could quote what I heard,
not knowing how to ask, and being unsure
whether what I remembered was accurate
to what I was told. My mind could easily wander.

A few of the phrases my mother used often stuck with me,
one of them was 'Don't have children, have grandchildren',
a phrase that to my easily scattered mind became
'Being a grandparent is better than being a parent',
and implied criticism of me being a child.

As if I had the choice of being an adult.
I did not know, but have learned since
that my Mother was quoting Gore Vidal,
who was partly raised in great privilege
by his grandfather, Senator Thomas Gore,
who, though blind, encouraged a love books,
whilst he served in the US senate.

It would have been a better for me
if the quote ran 'Don't get born into penury
where there are no books.'. So much
of the original context was lost to me. 

Another quote that got truly mangled in how it was
handed down to me became 'Great minds think alike
and mediocre minds seldom differ.'. A quote about false calm,
or so I taught myself to think. Not knowing any better.

Today I found the original quote 'Great minds
have always encountered violent opposition
from mediocre minds.'. As quoted at about 
the six mins 50 second mark in the fourth
of The Reith Lectures, as said by Albert Einstein
in support of Bertrand Russell circa 1940,
as Russell was being cancelled as lecturer.

It hard to imagine how the quote got reversed
in translation to what Mother said, who to be kind
found fighting her corner in life difficult.

Whether I agreed with my Mother or didn't,
she made my fight for my own corner in life
hard enough, but still a seek a space of my own
in which I can be agreeable and modest. 

Even as many Americans get labelled 'violent and wrong',
by their government, as if violence is at it's most right
only when the government organises it.