Great Quote by Mark Twain on Anti-Smoking Movement of the 19th Century

[northernneil]

I don’t want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my pipe with it. I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man’s health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years’ indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc...  
And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do with it? What use can you put it to? Money can’t save your infinitesimal soul...  
Now you know all these things yourself, don’t you? Very well, then, what is the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In a word, why don’t you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you are yourselves, by your villainous ‘moral statistics’?

I got the quote from "Velvet Glove, Iron Fist: A History of Anti-Smoking," but the original quote was taken from 'The Moral Statistician’, Mark Twain, Originally published in Sketches, Old and New, 1893'
Thought it was worth sharing here

 

[jkrug]

Worth posting indeed!!! An excellent view of the situation for sure. I think I may print that out on some nice parchment, frame it and hang it in my rec room for all to read and ponder on. ::

 

[stvalentine]

Great post indeed! Things haven´t much changed since then....

 

[edwinbaz]

Brilliant quote! Thanks for sharing it.

 

[warren]

Words from a true son of Sybaris. My kind of guy! We need to remember though, he had plenty of money at that time (1893 I believe) in his life. So, money meant less to him than it would to someone struggling to get by, he had plenty. It's all in one's perspective and position I suppose.

 

[newbroom]

Until I learned to smoke a pipe, tobacco was something I had used without joy.

Pulling on a nail first thing in the a.m. with a cup of coffee did provide a certain pleasure, but it was always tempered with nagging guilt I no longer feel with a pipe.

 

[aldecaker]

Absolute genius quote from an absolute genius. I recently finished "Following the Equator". It was like the man could look forward in time, so spot on were many of his observations that are relevant today.

 

[stickframer]

One of my favorites.

 

[cortezattic]

Mark Twain could express the essence of a matter as few others could.

 

[tuold]

The quote is a tad too long for my sig but I'm copying and pasting it for later use!
I think I would liked this Mark Twain chap =)

 

[deathmetal]

It seems to me the push against smoking coincided with the entrance of insurance into the health care business.

 

[warren]

As long as I can remember wiser people than I thought smoking as inherently bad from both a cost and a health perspective. My parents admonished me in the 50's. The American Cancer Society in the 60's. Health care came to party late.
Many, many years ago English royalty and the ruling class demonized smoking. Smoking was seen as something for the lower classes by and large. Men pretty much relegated smoking to the club room or tavern. Smoking for fun or diversion by the masses is really only a late 17th, early 19th century behavior.
Wide spread smoking in Europe was simply the result of certain people trying to make a market for tobacco from the New World. Then big tobacco wanted more money and founded markets world wide. Still, at any one time, only a tiny percentage of the world population took to the weed. Although, in high school all the "cool crowd" smoked. Of course the "cool crowd" was but a tiny part of the student body.
Smoking is good for enriching certain people with our moneys.

 

[aldecaker]

Warren, have you heard of Buzz Killington? :lol:

 

[tuold]

deathmetal wrote:

It seems to me the push against smoking coincided with the entrance of insurance into the health care business.

The insurance industry has always been offering health care insurance. I think the biggest changes have come about since government has gotten involved. (Not just gotten involved but wrote the rules for it.)

 

[warren]

No. A take off on "buzz kill" I just read. Didn't mean to harsh anyone's mellow. :rofl:

 

[northernneil]

It seems to me the push against smoking coincided with the entrance of insurance into the health care business.

Actually, the push against smoking existed virtually as soon as tobacco was discovered by western culture. Tobacco use has gone through peaks and valleys, but there has always been a force to stand up against it.
If you are actually interested in the war against smoking, the book in which I pulled this quote is very well written, unbiased view on subject. I reference the name in my first post.

 

[mso489]

Some perceptive statistician at the FDA (yes) factored in the pleasure attained with other variables in smoking and it rearranged the risk benefit data considerably. The FDA hasn't said much about that one lately, and I'm not sure if the authors of the report are still employed with them, or under contract, but it certainly made the point however fleetingly.

 

[deathmetal]

Actually, the push against smoking existed virtually as soon as tobacco was discovered by western culture.

I should be more specific: the legal push which really seemed to happen in the 1980s at about the same time all that health insurance appeared. Mysterious coincidence, no doubt.

Some perceptive statistician at the FDA (yes) factored in the pleasure attained with other variables in smoking and it rearranged the risk benefit data considerably.

Fred N. had a great riff on the ex post facto fallacy inherent in people looking at the long-lived. He, like all other data, argues for nature, not nurture; it's in the cards, in other words. I think that is why it is so offensive to people that smoking exists. They want us all to live long on the basis of eating arugula, running five miles a day, and not some unequal method like genes

 

[aldecaker]

Didn't health insurance get big when WWII wage controls made it necessary for employers to offer employee hiring incentives other than cash money?

 

[okiescout]

Mark Twain, Bravo, Bravo, Bravo!
Great quote, Neil. Thanks for posting.
"Smoking is good for enriching certain people with our moneys."
Warren, while that is true, but we are not helpless, you can quit anytime. I smoked cigarettes and quit for 3 decades, then returned to smoking pipes because I chose to. No one made me. My choice. :D