At various times, a quote titled “The Truth Has No Defense Against a Fool Determined to Believe a Lie’ ~ Mark Twain” has been circulating on social media.
In 2022, see some of the posts that circulated on Facebook here, here, here and here.
See archived versions of the posts here, here, here and here.
See some Facebook posts circulating in 2021 making the same claim here, here and here.
See archived versions of the posts here, here and here.
Fact Check
According to the rumor scanner’s investigation, Mark Twain did not make the quote about truth, rather it is being circulated on the internet without any reference.
Mark Twain, whose real name was Samuel Clemens, an American writer, literary figure and lecturer.
Mark Twain made numerous quotes during his lifetime that later became famous. But to find out whether the claimed quote is Mark Twain’s or not, the Rumor Scanner team did a keyword search at the beginning. However, no information about this could be found in any reliable source.
Google’s service ‘Google Books’ is a reliable means of finding quotes mentioned in books by authors. So, the Rumor Scanner team searched Google Books about this and found the quote published in the book ‘Reign of the Essence: Encyclopedia of Critical Thinking’ published this year (2022) by the American author Dr Feridoun Shawn Shahmoradian.
However, the author did not mention any source of the quote. Later, the Rumor Scanner team tried to contact Dr Feridoun Shawn Shahmoradian. But, no response was received from him till the publication of this article.
Also, by searching on different keywords, the quote was not found in Mark Twain’s various speeches and books he wrote.
That is, the quote about ‘truth’ circulating on the Internet, was not made by Mark Twain.
Origin of the rumor
Using Facebook monitoring tools, the first related post was found on November 09, 2021, on a Facebook account named ‘Karin Wells’.
However, on Twitter, the same quote was found on March 17 of the same year (2022) by an account called ‘𝕊𝕜𝕖𝕝𝕖𝕥𝕠𝕟𝕂𝕖𝕪³’ .
Neither of the two accounts’ posts cited the source of the quote.
The same quote, somewhat distorted, was posted on Twitter on August 19, 2020. However, no one’s name was mentioned as the commenter of the said quote in that tweet.
Bottom Line
Without any reliable sources, The quote “The Truth Has No Defense Against a Fool Determined to Believe a Lie” is being circulated on social media claiming to be a quote from Mark Twain. However, no such quote by Twain has been found in any reliable source. Moreover, a alerted version of the quote was posted on Twitter before it went viral as claimed by Mark Twain. So it can be said that a quote written by someone is being promoted in the name of Mark Twain.
So, A quote claiming to be a Mark Twain quote about truth has gone viral on Facebook; Which is completely false.
Sources
- Biography: Mark Twain
- Dr Feridoun Shawn Shahmoradian: Reign of the Essence: Encyclopedia of Critical Thinking
- Lajaeffects: Tweet
