Mark Twain said...

[avevale_intelligencer]

"Faith is believing something you know ain't so."

Twain was a very clever man and a great writer, but he was wrong, and I think this statement has caused endless misunderstandings. That is not what faith is. I don't have any faith, but even I know that.

Because if that was all faith was, I could do it easily.

Comments

[jahura.livejournal.com]

That quote comes from Following the Equator; context here: http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3200/pg3200.html#id30339 -
which makes it a fictional quote from a fictional chronicle of a fictional character of another of his novels, The Tragedy of Puddn'head Wilson. Therefore, it wasn't really Twain himself who said it or even an implication that he personally thought that way.

What do you think faith is?

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I think faith is believing something that you know to be true but can neither prove nor disprove in a way that will satisfy another person.

Thanks for the context. I've seen it so many times quoted as if it were the answer to the question "Mr Twain, what is faith?" or simply as a statement of fact. Come to think of it, if after my death people start quoting the things my characters say as if they were my actual opinions, people will get a very strange idea of me...

[jahura.livejournal.com]

I think faith is believing something that you know to be true but can neither prove nor disprove in a way that will satisfy another person.

I like that.

As for finding the context, I kind of took it up as a personal challenge. I couldn't imagine someone like Twain saying it in all seriousness when sarcasm was his weapon of choice. It did, as it turned out, fit his pattern of at least one idiot for each village his imagination built. It is scary what people will draw out of a single line from a massive dialogue.