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  • 2019-09-16 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Mark Twain Say, ‘If Voting Made A Difference, They Wouldn’t Let Us Do It’? (en)
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  • A post shared on Facebook alleges that author Mark Twain once said, If voting made a difference, they wouldn’t let us do it. Verdict: False The Daily Caller found no record of the statement in Twain’s written body of work. Fact Check: The quote has been frequently attributed to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer author and satirist Samuel Clemens, better known by the pseudonym Mark Twain. (RELATED: Viral Quote Attributed To Aldous Huxley May Actually Come From The Doors Keyboardist) There is, however, no evidence that Twain ever said or wrote this saying about voting. A search of his complete literary works , as well as his correspondence , turned up no matching or similar phrases. Robert Hirst , curator of the Mark Twain Papers at the University of California, Berkley, told FactCheck.org that the quote was absolutely not accurate. It’s also out of character – he voted often, and involved himself as a citizen in politics in a number of issues, said Steve Courtney, the curatorial special projects coordinator for the Mark Twain House and Museum , in an email to the Caller. In this country we have one great privilege which they don’t have in other countries, Twain once said on the issue of voting. When a thing gets to be absolutely unbearable the people can rise up and throw it off. That’s the finest asset we’ve got – the ballet box. A variation of the statement appeared unattributed in a 1976 column published in the Lowell Sun periodical, though elements of the expression may have appeared earlier. In that article, the columnist Robert Borden wrote , If voting could change anything it would be made illegal! (en)
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