Mark Twain Probably Said That

Can't get enough of this video? Here are some related videos:
The Differences Between the North and South Before the Civil War
Getting Reactions to the Confederate Flag
The Life and Times of John Brown
How Andrew Carneige Became the Richest Man in the World (and then gave it all away) 
Are We in the Second Gilded Age? 
The 2020s are the 1890s

​I’m Mr. Beat
"If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything." 
That’s a famous quote, a quote from a dude remembered for his quotes. (turning) Don’t quote me on that.
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way."
That’s another famous quote, from the same dude I just mentioned….a dude remembered for his quotes.

That dude was Samuel Clemens, better known to the world as Mark Twain. 
“Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence in society." 
Yet another actual quote from Twain, one of his hundreds of sayings we are still quoting today, 116 years after his death.
"Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first." Ok that quote is often ATTRIBUTED to Mark Twain, (turning) but there’s no evidence he actually ever said that.
"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
Yeah, according to the Mark Twain Project at UC Berkeley, that’s the single most-cited fake Twain quote on the internet. (turning) It has absolutely no connection to anything Twain ever wrote or said.
I bring this all up to illustrate how Mark Twain was so good with his words….so witty (“New Year's Day - Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”)….so insightful ("Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.")....so profound ("All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.")....that even when he DIDN’T say it, we often SAY he said it. "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." No, there’s no evidence he said that either.

In this video, let’s look at the life of the American who gets quoted the most. (turning) And MISquoted the most.

He was perhaps the greatest storyteller in American history. He basically defined American literature. While most American writers tended to mimic European authors, Twain was like “nope,” I’m gonna do my own thing. Sure, Twain gave us classic stories like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, but he wasn’t just famous for his books. He was famous for being Mark Twain- the personality, the comedian, the social critic.

In that way, you could say that Twain was one of the first modern celebrities. As the author Ron Chernow points out, Twain actively BUILT his fame in a way that feels very modern, carefully crafting his public image with his white suit, bushy mustache, and trademark wit. He toured the world giving lectures, but in many ways these lectures felt like stand-up comedy. 

And to look at Twain, we have made the journey to Twain’s hometown….Hannibal, Missouri, a town that peaked in population 100 years ago and today continues to march on mostly BECAUSE of Twain. Indeed, tourism is a big part of Hannibal’s economy, as not only did young Samuel Clemens grow up here, two of his most famous books….The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn….are set here. Yeah, that’s the Mississippi River behind me, which is basically the main character in those books.

Here’s the story of Samuel Clemens….or Mark Twain. Same dude! You knew who I was talking about, ok?

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."
-Probably Mark Twain

Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30th, 1835, in Florida….Missouri. (turning) A tiny village called Florida, in the state of Missouri. He came into the world two months premature, so frail that his parents weren't sure he'd make it. He was also born under Halley's Comet. And here’s the thing…later on he predicted CORRECTLY that he would die when the comet returned. That's either one of the greatest coincidences in history, or he could LITERALLY PREDICT THE FUTURE. Sam was the sixth of seven children. His mother, Jane, would be a huge influence on young Sam. From her he later said he got his sense of humor and storytelling abilities. Sam’s dad, John, was a lawyer and often struggling merchant. Jane was a conservative and very religious. John was not religious at all and even identified as “agnostic.”

When Sam was four years old, the family moved right here to Hannibal. Right here on the banks of the Mississippi River. (turning) And this place? This RIVER? It would define everything about who Samuel Clemens would become.

This is the house. The actual boyhood home. We were up in there. In the 1840s, Hannibal was a quickly growing and somewhat rough town. Sam and his friends played along the river and watched steamboats roll in and explode this quiet little place into noise and chaos. And they explored caves, such as this cave, today known as Mark Twain Cave but originally known as McDowell’s Cave. In 2019, Dr. Cindy Lovell got worldwide attention after discovering the boyhood signature of Samuel Clemens. And THAT is it. 

But Hannibal also had a shady side that the young Sam Clemens could not ignore. Missouri was a slave state. In fact, Sam's father owned an enslaved person. His uncle owned several. And Sam spent summers on that uncle's farm, playing in the enslaved quarters, listening to stories and spirituals. These early encounters likely planted seeds of guilt and moral questioning that would eventually bloom into some of the most searing anti-slavery writing in American literature. But we'll get there.

When Sam was eleven, his father died, leaving the family in debt and Sam with almost no formal schooling. So he did what any resourceful kid would do. He became a printer's apprentice. He learned to love words by setting them into type, and fortunately he was a good reader by then and read anything he could get his hands on. Sam worked for the Hannibal Journal, a newspaper that his older brother, Orion, owned. Orion would later get into politics, by the way.

Reading about a bunch of faraway places I’d say influenced Sam’s desire to travel. In May 1853, when he was 17, he traveled to St. Louis and then later Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, and New York City, working various typesetting jobs and joining the International Typographical Union, a printers’ trade union. After living a rather sheltered life, the big cities shocked Sam, and this is where we see his extreme racism and prejudice. “N****rs, mulattoes, quadroons, Chinese, and some the Lord no doubt originally intended to be white, but the first on whose faces leaves one uncertain as to that fact, block up the little, narrow street; and to wade through this mass of human vermin, would raise the ire of the most patient person that ever lived,” he wrote.

But the REAL dream? The real dream was being back out on the river.

In 1857, when Clemens was 20 years old, he began training as a riverboat pilot under a captain named Horace Bixby. And this wasn't just a job. This was EVERYTHING. Riverboat pilots were the rockstars of the Mississippi River. Not only did they make good money, but they were pretty well respected. They had to memorize hundreds of miles of shifting, dangerous water. Clemens earned his pilot's license in 1859, and for a brief, glorious stretch, he was living the dream, man. 
Then the Civil War happened and shut the whole river down. Classic.

Clemens briefly joined a pro-Confederate militia, but after just two weeks, he basically said the heck with this crap and deserted.

"Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved." Yeah that’s another great quote by him.

Clemens didn’t want to be involved in that bloody war. And so, he hopped a stagecoach and headed out west.

-We’ll be back right?-
Hey, you wanna know one way to fight back against misinformation? By critical thinking. And I’ve got a book that inspires us to do just that. THE BOOK, man. Quite literally. “The Book.” The Ultimate Guide to Rebuilding Civilization. Let’s check it out.

(footage of Mr. Beat reacting to the book as he turns through the pages.)

So, as you can see, it’s visually stunning. High paper quality and binding, meant to last a millenia, not a decade. Each book contains a secret puzzle for readers to discover, adding an extra layer of intrigue and interactivity. It’s captivating for both your technical and humanities-minded friends. Friends? Not those friends. Your real life friends. This would make the perfect gift for your smart friend…or yourself…since…ya know…you’re pretty smart, too. 

Seriously, one of the coolest books I’ve ever seen. Check the link in the description to buy a copy, and use code MRBEAT10 to get 10% off your order. Thanks to Hungry Minds, the creative team of artists, scientists, architects, designers, and entrepreneurs behind this book, for sponsoring this video. 

"When you catch an adjective, kill it."
-Mark Twain

He didn’t head out west not knowing anyone. You see, Abraham Lincoln himself had nominated Orion to Secretary of the Nevada Territory, and Sam decided to tag along with him. The two brothers traveled on a stagecoach across the Great Plains, crossing through the Rocky Mountains. They even visited the Mormon community in Utah. Sam’s journey ended in Virginia City, Nevada, where he tried silver mining. Uh yeah, by all accounts, he was terrible at it. Couldn’t mine crap.
So he did the only sensible thing. He became a newspaper reporter for the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise. And it was there, on February 3, 1863, that Samuel Clemens first used the pen name  *MARK TWAIN.* "mark twain" was actually a riverboat term. It meant the water was two fathoms deep….or about 12 feet or 3.7 meters…or the safe depth for riverboats. Clemens had used several pseudonyms during his writing career, but Twain would stick with him for the rest of his life.

And so, hence forth I will refer to him as….MARK TWAIN.

In Nevada, Twain developed a relatable, satirical voice that perfectly matched the rough-and-tumble frontier. In 1864, Twain moved to San Francisco, where he continued to be a journalist. He was writing hoaxes, satire, tall tales, and starting to get a national reputation for all of it. And then, in 1865, he published a short story that changed everything. (turning) What was that short story’s name again? Seriously, I forgot.  Ah yes, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. It was a viral sensation, and just like that Mark Twain was famous.

And his popularity began to grow. Twain spent the next few years traveling all over the world. In 1866, he traveled to modern-day Hawaii as a reporter for the Sacramento Union. The next year, he traveled to the Mediterranean Sea to tour both Europe and the Middle East. What resulted was The Innocents Abroad, a guidebook that became one of bestselling travel books in American history. In The Innocents Abroad, the main character wasn’t the places, but Twain himself. Americans could easily relate to the book because Twain wrote as a true representative of the United States traveling around the world.
Twain's genius was taking Americans abroad and showing them how ridiculous everyone was. Including, especially, Americans. 

Twain wasn't just a funny man. Through his writings, he was crafting a persona with meticulous, almost obsessive care. Anyway, The Innocents Abroad made Twain rich and famous.

After returning to the United States, Twain got honorary membership in Yale University’s secret  society Scroll and Key. Meanwhile, Twain had fallen in love. On that Mediterranean cruise I just mentioned, Twain saw a portrait of a young woman and later said it was “love at first sight.” As it turns out, the woman was Olivia Langdon, the sister of a dude named Charles Langdon, whom Mark had befriended on the trip. Back home, Twain asked Olivia to attend a reading by Charles Dickens in New York City. Woah what a first date.  And after a long, somewhat awkward courtship that Livy's family was very skeptical about, they would get married in Elmira, New York, Olivia’s home town, on February 2, 1870.

“Livy,” as Olivia was nicknamed, ended up being Twain’s editor. She read every manuscript. She pushed back, often being quite critical of him. And her family's deep abolitionist roots helped shape and sharpen his moral thinking on race in America. In other words, she helped Twain not be so freaking racist. 

Livy’s dad, Jervis, bought them a mansion in Buffalo, New York. Hey, will someone buy ME a mansion? Please? Jervis also gave Twain part ownership in a newspaper. This gave him tremendous financial stability, and he now focused on starting a family. Together, Livy and Mark would have four children: Langdon, Olivia, Clara, and Jean. Langdon was born prematurely, and would die as a toddler. Livy and Mark then moved to Hartford, Connecticut, where they rented a big house and quickly became embedded in the thriving literary scene there. And it was there that Twain threw himself into his most productive era. 

“My books are water; those of the great geniuses is wine. Everybody drinks water.”
-Mark Twain

In Hartford, Twain would write every day. But once the sales money from The Innocents Abroad began to dry up, Twain realized he’d have to do other things to support his growing family. Using his celebrity status to generate hype, he went on a lecture tour. 76 performances in 15 states, from Maine to Illinois. He also began regularly traveling to England.

Around this time, Twain co-authored a satirical novel called The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, which criticized the greed and political corruption in American society of the time. The novel would give the era its nickname- we now called the period of American history between the 1870s and around 1900 The Gilded Age.

In 1874, Twain and his family moved into this epic house. Built in the American Gothic Revival style, today it’s a museum dedicated to Twain. One biographer described the house as "part steamboat, part medieval fortress and part cuckoo clock."^1 Twain spent a lot of time in THIS room writing and smoking cigars. (Billiards Room) It was here that Twain apparently wrote his best stuff. His first masterpiece? His first solo attempt at a novel. That would end up being the aforementioned The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Supposedly he wrote it on a typewriter, which was not a common thing to do at the time. Set in the 1830s to 1840s in a small town very similar to Hannibal, the novel is about the adventures of Tom Sawyer. Uh yeah, you’ll just have to read it to find out what those adventures were. (turning) It’s a good book. Holds up surprisingly well. Read it. First officially published on June 9, 1876, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer originally was a commercial failure. Eventually, though, it would end up being Twain’s bestselling book and considered a masterpiece. 

But it wasn’t just The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. When he was in his forties Twain wrote multiple successful and influential books. The Prince and the Pauper, Twain’s first attempt at historical fiction, published in 1881. Life in the Mississippi, a memoir/travel book, published in 1883. And then, his greatest masterpiece, the aforementioned Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, published in 1884. Considered one of the most influential books of all time, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is actually a sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but this is one of those rare examples of a sequel outshining the original. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the first mainstream American book to feature informal English. It is a story about a boy and a runaway enslaved man named Jim, floating down the Mississippi River on a raft. It is also one of the most courageous moral arguments ever made in American fiction….that Jim is a full human being, that the society trying to return him to bondage is the thing that is monstrous, not him. And Twain puts this in the mouth of a barely-educated white kid from Missouri who slowly, painfully, chooses his own conscience over what his whole world has told him is right.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn may have turned Twain into the father of American literature, but it also was quite a controversial book due to being quite offensive to a lot of people. I mean, Twain uses the “N word” throughout the book. Still, this book almost singlehandedly is a big reason why Twain became someone we still talk about today. Ok?

Even after Huckleberry Finn, Twain continued to write classics, like A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Pudd'nhead Wilson, and Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc.

But here's where things go sideways. Because as a STORYTELLER, Twain was brilliant. (turning) As a BUSINESSMAN? Not so much at all.

“The lack of money is the root of all evil.”
-Mark Twain

Sure, Twain made a lot of money through his writing, but he also LOST a lot of money through his investments. Always fascinated by scientific development and technology, he invested the equivalent of more than $10 million in today’s money on a mechanical typesetting machine invented by a guy named James Paige. The Paige Compositor. Sure, it was a marvel of engineering….eighteen thousand individual parts….but it almost never worked. 

Twain also started his own publishing house, Charles L. Webster and Company, which DID publish Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs…..a genuine sensation and a genuine bestseller, for real…..but then followed it up with a string of spectacular failures. Fewer than 200 copies sold of a biography of Pope Leo XIII. What was he thinking? No one gives a crap about Pope Leo the 13th. 

Anyway, in 1894, it all collapsed. Twain declared bankruptcy. He owed the equivalent of millions in today's dollars. He was humiliated, depressed, and practically broke. But instead of using legal loopholes to hide from his debts, Twain, now approaching his sixties, did something remarkable. Guided by his close friend, and Standard Oil executive, Henry Huttleston Rogers, Twain went on a grueling, worldwide speaking tour to pay back every single creditor dollar-for-dollar. He lectured his way through North America, Australia, India, South Africa, and Europe, and indeed, paid back every single creditor in full. It was quite a comeback. The tour led to another travel guidebook, Following the Equator, published in 1897.

Though he successfully paid back his debts and restored his honor, (turning) Twain's later years were pretty sad…filled with tragedy man. While he was away on tour, his brilliant and beloved 24-year-old daughter Susy, who had started writing a biography of her dad at 13 years old, died of spinal meningitis. After this, Twain had to move his family out of their beloved home in Hartford and moved to Europe, where the cost of living was much lower. They spent much of the next few years constantly on the move as they searched for doctors who could help Livy’s deteriorating health. They lived in England, France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, finally returning to the United States….specifically New York…in 1900. 

By that time, Twain had spoken out a lot more about politics. Why the heck would he want to destroy his career like that? Could you imagine being a celebrity and then sharing your political opinions? (turning) That’s extremely ill-advised, ok? Anyway, Twain had become the country’s most famous person against imperialism, constantly criticizing American foreign policy in places like Cuba and the Philippines. He became the vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League, fiercely writing essays against American occupation abroad. He drew a sharp line between loving your country and blindly following its leaders, noting….
"Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it."
Twain stayed busy, in constant demand to give speeches. 

But then, more tragedy. Livy’s health continued to decline. The family moved to Florence, Italy, hoping the climate there would help. It did not, and Livy died on June 5, 1904. The family moved back to New York after her death.

Despite these tragic times and despite now being an old man, Twain was as popular as he had ever been. He continued to regularly speak in public and had a pretty big cultural and political influence. He had certainly changed with the times. Despite once being a conservative and even a reactionary, he had evolved into one of the nation’s leading progressive thinkers. At a copyright hearing at the Library of Congress on December 7, 1906, Twain appeared wearing a white suit, the first of many appearances in a white suit. For the rest of his life it’d be a big part of his image. But the white suit, the banquet speeches, the wit….meh….it was all increasingly just a mask. Behind it was grief, cynicism, and a darkening view of humanity itself. He wrote pieces in those last years that he refused to publish because he thought the world wasn't ready. Pieces about the cruelty of God, the stupidity of man, the machinery of oppression. Making good money once again, in 1908, Twain moved from New York to Redding, Connecticut to THIS mansion. 

And then, even more tragedy. On May 20, 1909, his good friend Henry Rogers suddenly died. Later that year, on Christmas Eve of all freaking days, his daughter Jean died of a seizure in Twain’s bathtub. He outlived three of his four children and his wife. That’s pretty sad. The humorist who made the entire world laugh became deeply cynical, pessimistic, and angry.

"The report of my death was an exaggeration." 
-Mark Twain

He predicted his own death!
On April 21, 1910….sure enough, as Halley's Comet blazed back across the sky….Samuel Langhorne Clemens aka Mark Twain… died of a heart attack at his home in Redding. He was seventy-four years old.

Twain’s last work was his autobiography. It wasn’t published until 2010, 100 years after his death, as Twain had wished.^2

"We are nothing but echoes. We have no thoughts of or own, no opinions of our own, we are but a compost heap made up of the decayed heredities, moral and physical." 
-Mark Twain

Mark Twain showed us the best and worst of America through humor and honesty.

He wasn’t just a great writer. He was the first great American CELEBRITY. He understood that a persona was itself an art form. He understood that the funniest things and the most tragic things are often the exact same things, just viewed from a different angle. I’d argue that today’s comedians owe a LOT to Twain…he certainly paved the way for them. Twain had been born a sickly premature baby in a tiny Missouri village. He'd been a printer's devil, a wanderer, a riverboat pilot, a soldier (for two weeks), a failed miner, a reporter, a lecturer, a novelist, a publisher, a bankrupt, a world traveler, and the most famous writer in America.
He invented a pen name and then he BECAME it.
Twain understood the American psyche better than almost anyone else before or since. He knew our virtues, but he was never afraid to point out our vices. 
And it all started right here. This river. This town. (turning) That kid watching the steamboats roll in.
I'll leave you with just one more classic Twain quote that we should probably all remember before leaving a comment underneath a video:
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
So on that note, I'm going to follow his advice and stop talking.

But actually scratch that. I need your comment below because it helps signal to algorithms that this is a video worth watching. Please type your favorite Mark Twain quote in the comments below. There might be a chance that it's actually not a quote by him, but who cares. He deserves credit.  Yeah, this is the main book that I relied on while researching for this video. Ron Chernow is such a good storyteller, and this book is on sale last I checked. All other sources in the description, as always, Patrick Mahomes. 

And thank YOU for staying curious!
________________________________________
^1. Kaplan, Justin (1966). Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain. New York: Simon & Schuster. p. 181. ISBN 9780671748074.
^2. "Dead for a Century, He's Ready to Say What He Really Meant" The New York Times 9 July 2010

Sources/further reading:
Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
Purchase here: https://amzn.to/4dGdQlT
Mr. Clemens and Mark Twain: A Biography by Justin Kaplan
Purchase here: https://amzn.to/4wN7bPC 
The Autobiography of Mark Twain
https://dn720700.ca.archive.org/0/items/autobiographyofm0000neid/autobiographyofm0000neid.pdf 
Mark Twain, Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches & Essays 1891–1910 by Louis J. Budd
https://web.archive.org/web/20220221024155/https://orwell.ru/library/reviews/twain/english/e_twain
https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/visit/bancroft/mark-twain-papers 
https://legacy.mtpo2.org/ 
https://simple.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Twain 
https://web.archive.org/web/20230116060517/https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Shackel/publication/254316024_America-s_home_town_Fiction_Mark_Twain_and_the_re-creation_of_Hannibal_Missouri/links/570ba73608ae2eb94223a774/America-s-home-town-Fiction-Mark-Twain-and-the-re-creation-of-Hannibal-Missouri.pdf
https://newterritorymag.com/literary-landscapes/mark-twain-hannibal-missouri-2/ 
https://www.twainquotes.com/ 
https://twainsgeography.com/ 
https://www.elmira.edu/welcome-to-elmira/center-for-mark-twain-studies 

Creative commons credits:
C.Pederson
Marty Aligata