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

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SCIENTISTS

Scientists have odious manners, except when you prop up their theory; then you can borrow money of them.
- "As Concerns Interpreting the Deity"

A scientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did not start himself.
- A Tramp Abroad

The scientist. He will spend thirty years in building up a mountain range of facts with the intent to prove a certain theory; then he is so happy in his achievement that as a rule he overlooks the main chief fact of all--that his accumulation proves an entirely different thing.
- "The Bee" essay

Scientist
Illustration by "Dwig" from HAPPY HOLLOW, 1903

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.
- Life on the Mississippi
scientist
Illustration from first edition of
LIFE ON THE MISSISSIPPI

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