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Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z


MIND

Your mind is merely a machine, nothing more. You have no command over it, it has no command over itself--it is worked solely from the outside. That is the law of its make; it is the law of all machines.
"What is Man?"

I like to see my mind perform according to the law which I have laid down in "What Is Man"; the law that the mind works automatically, & plans & perfects many a project without its owner suspecting what it is about; the mind being merely a machine, & not in even the slightest degree under the control of its owner or subject to his influence.
- Letter to W. D. Howells, 4/17/1909

What is Man illustration
Illustration from AMERICAN EXAMINER, 1910
from the Dave Thomson collection

I have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
- The Innocents Abroad

 

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