My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It Flashcards
by Mark Twain — tap or click to flip
Flashcard Review
Flashcards: My First Lie, and How I Got Out of It
What was Twain's "second lie" (the first he remembers)?
At nine days old, he cried as if stuck by a pin when there was no pin — having learned that advertising pain brought petting, coddling, and extra food.
What invention did Twain say ended the baby-pin lie?
The safety pin (1867) — but he argues this is reform by force, not virtue, like temperance through prohibition. It stopped the act but not the disposition to lie.
What examples does Twain give of the silent-assertion lie operating on a national scale?
American slavery (the North's silence), the Dreyfus affair in France, and Chamberlain's push for war in South Africa — each sustained by a population pretending nothing was wrong.
How did Twain escape an embarrassment with Austrian police?
He told them he belonged to "the same family as the Prince of Wales" — meaning the human family — and they let him go with apologies.
How does Twain catch his English friend G--- in a silent lie?
G--- tips his hat and smiles at a stranger he doesn't know, silently pretending recognition to avoid embarrassing the man — which Twain identifies as the same kind of lie G--- just condemned.
What "golden lie" does G--- later confess to telling?
He concealed the disgraceful circumstances of an old friend's death, preserving the family's pride and their sacred memory of their father for all the years since.
How does the essay end — what happened with Twain's "second lie"?
He was turned over someone's knee and spanked. He remembers "something happened" and "there was music" but the details have faded into "senile fancy."
What is the "lie of silent assertion"?
A lie told without words, by staying quiet — the collective pretense that nothing wrong is happening, which sustains tyrannies, shams, and slaveries worldwide.
What is Twain's argument about individual versus societal lying?
That spoken personal lies are trivial (1 in 22,894) compared to the "silent colossal National Lie" — society hypocritically polices small lies while participating in massive collective ones.
How does the essay challenge the idea that lying is a choice?
Twain argues lying is an innate human condition from the cradle — not a moral failure but "the eternal law of his make" — and it is dishonest to pretend otherwise.
What is Twain's provocative proposal about consistency?
That we should either lie all the time or not at all — since we help the nation lie all day, it is hypocritical to object to one private lie "to go to bed on."
How does Twain use George Washington's cherry tree story?
He praises Washington's truth-telling as a shrewd career move ("it would make him President") but mocks "I cannot tell a lie" as a bigger lie than the one about the tree.
What is the rhetorical structure of the essay?
A bait-and-switch — the title promises a personal anecdote, but Twain detours into a sweeping philosophical argument about collective lying, returning to the personal story only in the final paragraph.
How does Twain use the G--- anecdote as a trap?
G--- condemns Twain's spoken lie, then immediately commits a silent one (greeting a stranger). Twain springs the trap to demonstrate that everyone participates in lying — the distinction is only in form.
How does Twain mock Bryant and Carlyle's famous quotes about truth?
He calls Bryant's "truth crushed to earth will rise again" the biggest lie he's ever heard, and says Carlyle's "a lie shall not live" was spoken in excitement while chasing Americans with brickbats.
What does Twain mean by calling the safety pin a "reform by force"?
It eliminated the specific lie (faking pin-sticks) without changing the disposition to lie — just as prohibition stops drinking without curing the desire, making the reform empty.
What does "ostensible" mean when Twain refers to "three prominent ostensible civilisations"?
Apparently or supposedly civilized — the word undercuts the claim, implying these nations only appear civilized while their silent lies sustain injustice.
What does "paladins" mean in "a couple of dozen moral paladins"?
Heroic champions of a cause — Twain uses it for the few who spoke up during the Dreyfus affair while the rest of France remained silent.
What does "reliquary" mean when Twain says Americans didn't care "what the reliquary thinks"?
A container for relics — here Twain uses it humorously for Carlyle himself, suggesting Americans treated the bricks he threw at them as holy souvenirs.
What does Twain mean by calling the silent national lie "the support and confederate of all the tyrannies"?
That collective silence is the active accomplice of oppression — it does not merely tolerate tyranny but sustains it, making every silent person complicit.
What is the significance of Twain's closing: "Let us be judicious and let somebody else begin"?
A devastating self-indictment — after arguing that silence enables evil, he admits he too will wait for someone else to speak up, demonstrating the very cowardice he has been attacking.
What does Twain mean by calling G---'s compassionate lie "one golden lie" that "atones for" a million truths?
That a single lie told to protect the innocent is worth more than a lifetime of truth-telling — moral value lies in intent and consequence, not in the form of the statement.