Mark Twain 58

NEWSPAPERS

     Mark Twain lived in a time when people depended on newspapers for most of their information about what was goiing on in the world.  He thought the public was too willing to believe the half-truths printed in the newpapers.  In an 1872 speech on "the Sins of the Press," he gave this example:
     "A Detroit paper once said that I was in the constant habit of beating my wife and that I still kept up this recreation up although I had crippled her for life and she was no longer able to keep out of my way when I came home in my usual frantic frame of mind.  Now scarcely the half of that was true. '

The trouble is that the stupid people--who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations--do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a mewspaper.   (from a speech "License of the Press," 1873)

The old saw says, "Let sleeping dog lie."  Right.  Still when there is much at stake it is better to get a newspaper to do it.  (from Following the Equator, 1897)

NEW YORK

I. a virtuous person only a year before, after immersion for one year--during one year in the New York morals--had no more conscience than a millionaire.  (from a 1906 speech, "New York Morals")

NEW YORKERS

     A New Yorker once chided Mark Twain:  "You Missouri people are all right, but you're too provincial."
     "Provincial?"  retorted Twain.  "On the contrary.  Nobody in New York knows anything about Missouri, but everybody in Missouri knows all about New York."

NOAH

The more I see of modern marine architechture and engineering the more I am dissatisfied with Noah's Ark. . . .Nobody but a farmer cold have designed such a thing, for such a purpose.  (from an 1896 notebook)