Rugged Quotes (2)
Experience, the only logic sure to convince a diseased imagination and restore it to rugged health.
Written in 1892. In The American Claimant (1896), 203. In Mark Twain and Brian Collins (ed.), When in Doubt, Tell the Truth: and Other Quotations from Mark Twain (1996), 48.
See also: | Convince (2) | Disease (115) | Experience (57) | Health (61) | Imagination (50) | Logic (66)
I never could do anything with figures, never had any talent for mathematics, never accomplished anything in my efforts at that rugged study, and to-day the only mathematics I know is multiplication, and the minute I get away up in that, as soon as I reach nine times seven— [He lapsed into deep thought, trying to figure nine times seven. Mr. McKelway whispered the answer to him.] I've got it now. It's eighty-four. Well, I can get that far all right with a little hesitation. After that I am uncertain, and I can't manage a statistic.
Speech at the New York Association for Promoting the Interests of the Blind (29 Mar 1906). In Mark Twain and William Dean Howells (ed.), Mark Twain's Speeches? (1910), 323.
See also: | Effort (6) | Figure (3) | Mathematics (221) | Multiplication (2) | Number (45) | Statistics (49) | Study (33) | Talent (12)