22 Nov Wisdom Never Expires | Mark Twain’s Words Still Ring True Today
Wisdom – we all have some, but very few speak truth and wisdom and have it resonate over time.
Mark Twain (1835-1910) gave a speech in 1901 relevant to today’s debate splitting our country over vaccine mandates: “Whose property is my body? Probably mine. I so regard it. If I experiment with it, who must be answerable? I, not the State. If I choose injudiciously, does the State die? Oh, no.”
Why can’t we discuss our differences these days without rancor? In Pudd’nhead Wilson, Twain wrote, “It were not best that we should think alike; it is the difference of opinion that makes horse races.”
Blind loyalty to the government was never a goal of the Founders. In his 1905 essay, The Czar’s Soliloquy, Twain says, “The modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism is loyalty to the nation all the time, loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”
These truths were spoken over 100 years ago; would that we would heed some Twain’s wisdom today.
