THE LIFESPAN OF A LIE

In a similar vein to "People don't have ideas - Ideas have people" is this quote:

"It's easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled." 

Over the past decade or so, these words have often been attributed to Mark Twain, but the factchecking websites cannot find this quote in any of his written material. 

(If it matters, the false attribution was the work of Twitter.)

Still, the factcheckers did find a similar idea expressed in Twain's autobiography:

"How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!" 

The curious thing about this quote is that in speaking of "how hard it is to undo a lie", Twain was thinking of two distinct difficulties: 1) Mustering up the courage to confess a lie and then 2) Convincing those who believed it that NOW you are telling the truth.

The difficulty of undoing a lie was a lesson Twain learned from one of his first experiences of "yarn-spinning" before a live audience. 

As a young boy, Twain had overheard a family visitor, one Dr. Peake, describe a horrific mansion fire he had once witnessed. The good doctor recounted the experience with drama and great detail. Young Twain was mesmerized.

During a return visit by Dr. Peake three or four years later, Twain - now an adolescent - rehearsed all the details of that great fire to an enraptured audience ... but under the pretense of seeing the whole thing in a hypnotic vision. Having overlooked the fact that Twain had heard the story from Peake himself, Peake and the others present were astonished.

Thirty five years later, Twain wrestled with a desire to come clean to his mother. To "undo" the lie. 

To Twain's amazement, when he confessed, his mother would have none of it. "She refused to believe that I had invented my visions myself; she said it was folly: that I was only a child at the time and could not have done it."

He could not convince her otherwise. She died wholeheartedly believing his original lie while, with equal firmness and determination, discounting his later confession as a lie. 

Twain concludes this episode with a poignant observation on the lifespan of a lie: "If I had taken out a life policy on this [lie] the premiums would have bankrupted me ages ago."

In other words ... some lies never die.