A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

Recent entries:
•“Welcome to growing older. Where all the foods and drinks you’ve loved for years suddenly seem determined to destroy you” (4/17)
•“Date someone who drinks with you instead of complaining that you drink” (4/17)
•“Definition of stupid: Knowing the truth, seeing evidence of the truth, but still believing the lie” (4/17)
•“Definition of stupid: Knowing the truth, seeing the evidence of the truth, but still believing the lie” (4/17)
•“Government creates the crises so it can ‘rescue’ you with the loss of freedom” (4/17)
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Entry from October 22, 2012
“In the first place God made idiots; this was for practice, then he made politicians”

The writer Mark Twain (1835-1910) wrote in 1897:
 
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards. — Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.”
 
“School boards” is sometimes replace with “politicians.” The book Republican Humor (1976) contained the joke, “In the first place, God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made politicians.”
 
 
Google Books
The Yale Book of Quotations
Edited by Fred R. Shapiro
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press
2006
Pg. 776:
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
U.S. writer, 1835-1910
“In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made proofreaders.”
Notebook, 1893
 
Google Books
Following the Equator:
A Journey Around the World (Vol. II)
By Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemons)
New York, NY: Harper & Brothers Publishers
1897
Pg. 295:
CHAPTER XXV.
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made School Boards. — Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar.
 
Google Books
Republican Humor
By Stephen J. Skubik and Hal E. Short
Washington, DC: Acropolis Books
1976
Pg. 116:
POLITICIANS
“In the first place, God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made politicians.”
 
13 March 1995, Worcester (MA) Telegram Gazette, “‘Twain’ criticizes review of lecture; Impersonator visits same”:
“God made idiots first, just for practice,” Caplan said. “Then he made politicians.”
 
1 February 2000, Salt Lake Tribune (Salt Lake City, UT), “Mark Twain Is Ridiculous As Hal Holbrook” by Robert Kirby, pg. B1:
“In the first place, God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made politicians.”
 
Google Books
Freedom In The Workplace:
The Untold Story Of Merit Shop Construction’s Crusade Against Compulsory Trade Unionism
By A. Samuel Cook
Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing
2005
Pg. 456:
In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made politicians.
Mark Twain
HUMORIST-WRITER
   
Zero Hedge
“First, God Made Idiots. That Was Just For Practice. Then He Made Politicians”
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/22/2012 08:57 -0400
Via Mark J. Grant, author of Out of the Box,
Politicians lead you to make more mistakes than any human invention in history with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.
(...)
In the first place God made idiots. That was just for practice. Then he made politicians.

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New York City • Government/Law/Military/Religion /Health • Monday, October 22, 2012 • Permalink


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