Not found in Twain's works, this was attributed to him in Reader's Digest (September 1939): no prior attribution known. Mark Twain’s father died when Twain was eleven years old.
Disputed
Variant: When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.
“I think about my father being called 'boy,' my uncle being called 'boy,' my brother, coming back from Vietnam and being called 'boy.' So I questioned myself: 'What does a black man have to do before he's given the respect as a man?' So when I was 18 years old, when I was old enough to fight and die for my country, old enough to drink, old enough to vote, I said I was old enough to be called a man. I self-ordained myself Mr. T so the first word out of everybody's mouth is 'Mr.”
That's a sign of respect that my father didn't get, that my brother didn't get, that my mother didn't get.
Attributed
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Mr. T 58
American actor and retired professional wrestler 1952Related quotes
“When a man is old enough to do wrong he should be old enough to do right also.”
Source: A Woman of No Importance
“Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.”
"Gerontion"
Poems (1920)
“And did you ever stop to think that im old enough to go to war but i aint old enough to drink.”
1819; the Spaniards had sent Guerrero's father to plead for an end to Guererro's rebellion. http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/history/jtuck/jtvguerrero.html
My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold, (1802); the last three lines of this form the introductory lines of the long Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood begun the next day.