There is perhaps no greater testament to Twain'due south lasting reputation than the habitual misattribution of miscellaneous wit and wisdom to his name. The circulation of such apocryphal aphorisms was mutual enough in the 20th century. It has only increased with the popularization of digital media. The nigh common question addressed to the Eye for Mark Twain Studies is some variety of "Did he actually say that?" Whenever possible, we track downwards the original source, as well every bit attempt to trace how their words came to be imagined in Twain's mouth.

This ane, ever popular, has seen spiking circulation since Jonathan Swan'southward awkward Axios interview with President Trump aired August 3rd on HBO. Here are just a couple of the hundreds of invocations I plant from the last few days, mostly commenting on or responding to the Axios interview, or advocating that Joe Biden, Trump's Democratic challenger, abstain from debating the president prior to the November election.

Marking Twain never said these words, nor anything resembling them.

On November 13, 1956, Hal Boyle, a Pulitzer-winning reporter for the Associated Printing, published a profile of actor Yul Brynner, who was having a hell of a yr. Brynner had already appeared in The 10 Commandments and The Rex & I. The next month would run across the premier of a 3rd blockbuster, Anastasia, with Brynner playing opposite Ingrid Bergman. The 3 films would exist nominated for eighteen Academy Awards and take home seven oscars between them, including a Best Actor trophy for Brynner.

As its subject was one of the hottest actors in Hollywood, Boyle's profile was syndicated by hundreds of newspapers across the Us. When the reporter asked one of those standard celebrity interview questions – "What is the greatest advice yous have ever received?" – Brynner replied by quoting his close friend, Jean Cocteau.

          
            
                          
          
          
Cocteau, a renowned French poet, playwright, and filmmaker, had befriended Brynner when he was an unknown actor in Paris. Their relationship jumpstarted his career, as Cocteau continued him with other famous artists and influential producers. The ii remained fast friends fifty-fifty after Brynner moved to the U.S. and became a Hollywood icon. Brynner's then wife, actress Virginia Gilmore, reported that Cocteau was "the only other human being that matched his vanity" and "Yul seemed to take lessons from him." A few years later, Brynner would appear in Cocteau'due south            The Testament of Orpheus            (1960), the final installment of a trilogy which would come to be regarded every bit groundbreaking experimental cinema.
          
In reviewing Cocteau's voluminous published writings, I have not been able to found that the statement Brynner attributes to him appears anywhere except the Boyle profile. Information technology does, however, appear to be part of a tendency of Brynner using Cocteau as cover when he wants to say something off-colour or insulting. At the premier of            Attestation, he berated a hostile audience of studio executives by saying, "Cocteau was right when he told me that this flick should be forbidden to imbeciles!" And, at the afterparty following his credence of another acting award, he drunkenly shared some more of Cocteau'south purported advice, as chronicled past biographer Jhan Robbins,
          
            
"Jean [Cocteau] gave me some excellent communication I want to share with all of yous. Jean told me that when you lot meet yourself becoming famous, you should never allow everyone think you go to the bath. You must never allow your fans to connect you with excretion."            
            from              Yul Brynner: The Inscrutable King              (1987) by Jhan Robbins          
          
It is quite possible that Brynner simply similar to merchandise on Cocteau'due south reputation to give gravitas to his own, less revelatory, observations. Whoever was responsible for the original "idiots on their own level" remark, it has had a long, strange afterlife, during which information technology has been completely severed from its origins in midcentury cinema. For at least the last thirty years the quote has not been, so far as I can tell, ever attributed to Cocteau, Brynner, or Boyle.
          
Instead, a wide variety of iterations take been attributed to a range of celebrities, including Kevin Garnett, George Carlin, and, nearly frequently, Mark Twain.          
          
            
                          
          
          
The conflation of            argue            and            associate            happened as early as 1958, when, in his column for the student paper at University of North Carolina, Frank Crowther misquoted Cocteau. Crowther would graduate later that year and begin a tragically short, but noteworthy career as a Autonomous speechwriter and regime bureaucrat. Pithy quotations are a crutch of mediocre paper columnists and Crowther was the commencement of many who would broadcast this one, though the last appearance I can observe with the original attribution to Cocteau comes from the            Kaplan Herald            in 1987. Thereafter, the aphorism connected to announced in some grade every few years, frequently with no attribution at all. Just often enough to keep it in circulation.          
          
That inverse in 1998, when during i twelve-month catamenia, versions were published in the              Atlanta Constitution, Daily Oklahoman, Elmira Star-Gazette, Kansas City Star, Longview News-Journal,            and              Moline Dispatch. Oddly, on none of these occasions was the quote attributed to any specific person. Sometimes the columnist said he had gotten the quote from a reader, sometimes he gave the impression he had come upwards with information technology himself.
          
It wasn't just the newspaper columnists either. Early that yr, before any announcer took credit for the aphorism, a neurosurgeon from Denver put it, along with a bunch of other received wisdom, in his affiliate on "Accountability" in a state medical journal.          
          
            
                          
          
          
            Why 1998? This remains a mystery to me. It does not appear in any of the George Carlin broadcasts, albums, or books from this period, the very summit of his popularity. It'southward possible that people attribute the quote to Carlin for the same reason they attribute information technology to Twain: he has a reputation for dark humour and a cynical outlook on mankind.
          
            
                          
          
          
From the '90s forward, the aphorism is permanently severed from its original wording, context, and attribution, only it is also increasingly popular. Tom Logan used it, without attribution, in the revised edition of his popular book on commercial acting,            Acting in The Million Dollar Minute            (2005). It appeared in            Great Negotiators            (2006), a handbook by business consultant Tom Beasor. It was part of a late-nineties advertising campaign for Crescent Market place, reportedly the oldest grocer in Oklahoma. And it continued to announced in hundreds of newspapers columns, letters to the editor, memoirs, obituaries, and yearbooks. The aphorism was reaching summit circulation in print media only equally the social media revolution took off in the mid-2000s, so the transition was inevitable. This is the earliest iteration I can find on Twitter:
          
            
                          
          
          
The quote appears equally early on as 2005 on Facebook. As has then often been the example with Twain apocrypha, the misattribution is a product of digital apportionment. While the correct attribution to Cocteau, Brynner, and Boyle was lost to print media by the late 1980s, I could detect no instance in which a newspaper columnist or reporter arbitrarily ascribed the aphorism to Twain until later on information technology had saturated social media.