Mark Twain? Isaac Asimov? Vincent van Gogh? Harold S. Kushner? Harold S. Kushner? Apocryphal?
Question for Quote Investigator: A famous author once commented on the anxiety induced by the contemplation of mortality. Here are two versions:
(1) Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life.
(2) I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.
U.S. humorist Mark Twain has received credit for this remark. Would you please help me to locate a citation which presents the correct phrasing?
Reply from Quote Investigator: Mark Twain died in 1910, and his two volume autobiography appeared in 1924.1 The editor was Twain’s friend and literary executor Albert Bigelow Paine who followed the deceased man’s wishes by withholding material that might cause unhappiness or pain to surviving friends and family members.
In 1958 Charles Neider who was working on a new edition of Twain’s autobiography published an article in “Harper’s Magazine” titled “Mark Twain Speaks Out”. The article contained controversial opinions that had been deliberately omitted from the 1924 edition of the autobiography. The material came from lengthy sessions of dictation Twain had engaged in during 1906 and 1907 when he was 72 years old. Boldface added to excerpts by QI:2
But I have long ago lost my belief in immortality—also my interest in it. I can say now what I could not say while alive—things which it would shock people to hear; things which I could not say when alive because I should be aware of that shock and would certainly spare myself the personal pain of inflicting it.
Twain offered an explanation for his lack of trepidation regarding his approaching demise:
Annihilation has no terrors for me, because I have already tried it before I was born—a hundred million years—and I have suffered more in an hour, in this life, than I remember to have suffered in the whole hundred million years put together.
There was a peace, a serenity, an absence of all sense of responsibility, an absence of worry, an absence of care, grief, perplexity; and the presence of a deep content and unbroken satisfaction in that hundred million years of holiday which I look back upon with a tender longing and with a grateful desire to resume, when the opportunity comes.
In 1959 Charles Neider completed his editing of “The Autobiography of Mark Twain”, and he published the revised and expanded edition which included the material from the “Harper’s Magazine” article.3 Thus, Twain’s comments achieved further distribution.
The inquiry above contained two versions of the quotation; however, QI has only found evidence supporting the first version. The second version was attributed to Twain in a 2006 book by Richard Dawkins. QI conjectures that the second version was derived from a paraphrase of the first version, and it was not spoken or written by Twain.
Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Continue reading “Quote Origin: Annihilation Has No Terrors For Me, Because I Have Already Tried It Before I Was Born”