Khari’s Reviews > The Autobiography of Mark Twain > Status Update

Well, now I know why Mark Twain always wore white.

You also have to feel for the guy, he outlived his wife and most of his children.

"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them are not worth a bras farthing."

Well Mark Twain clearly didn't believe in the fallen nature of humans.

Also, he seems to be getting a lot more cynical as time progresses.

She said something to the effect that the people of Britain were being polite but that their patience was running out and that when the patience of the Anglo Saxon race runs out they destroy continents.

It made me uncomfortable when I saw her say it, and then it struck me as odd when I was reading this. Is there a cultural belief of Anglo-Saxoninity as a higher race? Is it different than white supremacy?

"We are of the Anglo-Saxon race, and when the Anglo-Saxon wants a thing he just takes it."

This was said by the chairman of a banquet that Mark Twain visited and he didn't much like it, that the people there should applaud thievery because it was done by their race.

It reminded me of a video I saw, that I cannot trace where a woman was arguing against the islamification of England.

Reading about the death of his daughter and wife is a journey through grief.

"... And whose personality will surely shame hell itself when he arrives there, which will be soon, let us hope and trust."

I don't think he pulled his punches. I don't think he suffered from any moral relativism here. He clearly had the ability and the moral strength to speak out against what he thought was wrong.

"...of this planet for the past 1000 years. In this vast statement I am well within the mark, several millions of lives within the mark. It is curious that the most advanced and most enlightened century of all the centuries the sun has looked upon should have the ghastly distinction of having produced this moldy piety-mouthing hypocrite, this bloody monster, whose mate is not findable in human history anywhere..."

"...poor natives in the Congo every year, and does it by the silent consent of all the christian powers except England, none of them lifting a hand or a voice to stop these atrocities, although thirteen of them are by solemn treaty pledged to the protecting and uplifting of those wretched natives. In fourteen years Leopold has deliberately destroyed more lives than have suffered death on all the battlefields...

People seem to think that only modern day people understand how bad things were historically, they're wrong.

This is Mark Twain speaking contemporaneously about king Leopold of Belgium and what he did in the Congo.
"The royal palace of Belgium is still what has been for 14 years.The den of a wild beast, king Leopold II, who for money's sake, mutilates, murders and starves half a million of friendless and helpless...