The exact words
“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around.”The Reader's Digest, September 1937, credited to Mark Twain; no source in Twain's writings has been found (Quote Investigator)
✕ MisattributedSomeone else said or wrote it first; the famous name was attached later.
What people get wrong
Common reading
Mark Twain wrote this about his own father.
Mark Twain wrote this about his own father.
Closer to the original
No one has found it in anything Twain wrote or said, and the story cannot fit his life, because his father died when he was eleven. The joke is real and good, but the byline is borrowed.
No one has found it in anything Twain wrote or said, and the story cannot fit his life, because his father died when he was eleven. The joke is real and good, but the byline is borrowed.
Timeline
- 1847Mark Twain's father, John Marshall Clemens, dies when Twain is eleven. Twain never had a father around at fourteen or twenty-one.
- Early 1900sVersions of the joke about a teenager who knows more than his father circulate in print, sometimes loosely credited to Twain.
- September 1937The Reader's Digest prints the familiar wording with Twain's name, long after his death in 1910. It spreads from there.
Use it in a speech
There's an old joke, usually pinned on Mark Twain, about a boy who thinks his father is ignorant at fourteen and is amazed how much the old man has learned by twenty-one. Dad, I'm happy to report you got smarter right on schedule.
~13 secondsto say aloud
Pauseafter “by twenty-one”
Best spotthe Father's Day toast
Questions people ask
Did Mark Twain say “When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant”?
There is no evidence he did. The familiar version appeared in The Reader's Digest in 1937, and Twain's father died when Twain was eleven.
Who really said it?
The author is unknown. It seems to have grown from older jokes about teenagers and their parents.
Cite this quote
Don't cite this line as Mark Twain's words. There is no reliable source showing they said it. The real source is Anonymous; the familiar wording was printed in The Reader's Digest, so cite that instead. If you need to mention it, say it is “often attributed to Mark Twain” and, if you want a reference, cite this page:
MLA“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: Meaning and Origin.” QuoteDecoded, 2026, quotedecoded.com/quotes/when-i-was-a-boy-of-fourteen-my-father-was-so-ignorant/.